Books Made Into Movies at the Algonquin Area Public Library

Here is a list of some of our favorite books that have been turned into movies.  The books, and movies, are all available at the Algonquin Area Public Library!

Circle of Friends/ By Maeve Binchy

Movie: Circle of Friends, 1995

From Knockglen to Dublin, heartbreak and betrayal follow three extraordinary and unforgettable women as an explosive confrontation brings hidden lies to the surface and tests the meaning of love and the bonds of friendship.

Girl with A Pearl Earring/ By Tracy Chevalier

Movie: Girl with A Pearl Earring, 2003

History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

The Horse Whisperer/ By Nicholas Evans

Movie: The Horse Whisperer, 1998

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. A mother's quest begins--to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to The Horse Whisperer, Tom Booker. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heals broken spirits. Annie has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana, at the expense of her career, her marriage, her comfortable life. Pilgrim has become so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed. But Annie won't give up on him, for she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence. In the weeks to come, all their lives will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold.

White Oleander/ By Jennifer Fitch

Movie: White Oleander, 2002

A Los Angeles girl whose mother goes to jail is taken in hand by the city's foster-care program and the novel describes her experience in a series of homes, each a new adventure.

Cold Mountain/ By Charles Frazier

Movie: Cold Mountain, 2003

Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered. 

Memoirs of A Geisha/ By Arthur Golden

Movie: Memoirs of A Geisha, 2005

The story of a young girl's transformation into a geisha. But as World War II erupts and the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms.

The Firm/ By John Grisham

Movie: The Firm, 1993

At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had  his choice of the best in America. When Mitch McDeere signed on with  Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he  and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way.  The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school  loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a  decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his  brother Ray -- doing fifteen years in a Tennessee  jail -- already knew. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's  firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a  rock and a hard place, with no choice -- if he  wants to live.

I am Legend, And Other Stories/ By Richard Matheson

Movie: I Am Legend, 2007

A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

The Time Traveler’s Wife/ By Audrey Niffenegger

Movie: The Time Traveler’s Wife, 2009

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

The Notebook/ By Nicholas Sparks

Movie: The Notebook, 2004

A man picks up a faded, well-worn notebook and begins reading to a frail elderly woman, his voice recalling the heartbreaking story of two star-crossed lovers and their poignant, bittersweet journey to happiness. So begins this touching novel that is a dual tale of love lost and found, and of a man's gentle battle to reach an aging woman who cannot remember the most cherished moments of her life.