Film adaptations are great, but sometimes nothing can do a book justice quite like a full-blown TV series. It provides all the visual possibilities of a movie along with the added benefits of a long runtime and a chapter-style, episodic structure. (The Victorians basically consumed Dickens novels like 19th-century TV dramas, after all.)
Shows inspired by books span genres, from legal series like The Lincoln Lawyer to thrillers like You, fantasies like The Witcher, and period romances like Bridgerton, to name a few. And while audiences are watching around the world, these adaptations can also spark renewed interest in their source material, with books returning to bestseller lists years or sometimes even decades after they originally hit shelves.
We’ve rounded up a list of Netflix series that are based on books — classic and modern, fiction and nonfiction, happy and scary, funny and sad. Add these titles to your queue to find your newest bookish favorite.
Based on the best-selling novels by Cixin Liu, this epic drama spans decades and continents. The eight-episode series 3 Body Problem imagines what happens when a young scientist makes a bold decision in 1960s China that will have major global implications over the ensuing decades. In the present day, a group of brilliant physicists, baffled by recent anomalies in their research, team up with a hardened investigator (Benedict Wong) to reckon with the consequences.
The morning after a party at a lavish country house, Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is shocked to discover Gerry Wade (Corey Mylchreest) still in bed, even as seven alarm clocks go off inside his room. But Gerry isn’t sleeping — he’s dead, and Bundle is determined to solve the mystery of who is responsible for his untimely end. Helena Bonham Carter and Martin Freeman also star in the three-part adaptation of the Queen of Crime’s novel.
Here’s a how-to that could come in handy. Based on Holly Jackson’s young adult mystery novel of the same name, this series stars Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi, a teenager in a small English town who is still haunted by the disappearance of another girl years prior — and consumed by the conviction that the authorities got the wrong guy. When the young detective investigates the shocking case herself, she uncovers truths that many would prefer were left buried.
Surviving boot camp is one thing, but doing so when being gay in the military was illegal is another. This life-affirming dramedy follows closeted Cameron (Miles Heizer) and his best friend, Ray (Liam Oh), as they get thrown into the tough and unpredictable world of the 1990s US Marine Corps. They join a diverse group of recruits, and together, they discover their true selves while navigating the intense environment. The eight-episode series is inspired by former US Marine Greg Cope White’s memoir, The Pink Marine.
Based on Julia Quinn’s period romance novels and produced by Shonda Rhimes, the Regency-era series introduces audiences to the titular family and its eight siblings. Its inaugural season kicks off the matchmaking with the eldest Bridgerton daughter, Duchess Daphne Basset (Phoebe Dynevor), as she navigates the dos and don’ts of the social season — courtship protocol, dating etiquette, and the scandal sheets penned by Lady Whistledown. Each subsequent season follows the love story of another Bridgerton sibling, including Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), Colin (Luke Newton), and Benedict (Luke Thompson).
This limited series stars Michael Shannon as James Garfield, the underdog congressman who became the 20th US president in 1881. Based on Candice Millard’s nonfiction book Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, the four episodes chronicle Garfield’s improbable rise and abrupt fall at the hands of Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen), Garfield’s fanatical admirer and eventual assassin. Betty Gilpin, Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford, and Shea Whigham also portray real-life figures.
You never forget your first love. This eight-episode romance follows Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.), childhood friends who meet again as teenagers, their lives having diverged significantly in the interim. Even while struggling under the pressures of athletic competition, college admissions, and ambitious parents, they forge a powerful bond that may or may not be able to sustain past high school, but is sure to change them both forever. The acclaimed adaptation of the Judy Blume book is the brainchild of Mara Brock Akil (Girlfriends, The Game).
Get spooked with these creepy tales from Mike Flanagan, who adapted Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House for this show and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw for its follow-up, The Haunting of Bly Manor. Flanagan succeeded that pair of eerie tales with an adaptation of Christopher Pike’s The Midnight Club, which follows a group of hospice patients who like to tell each other scary stories late at night, as well as the Gothic horror series The Fall of the House of Usher, inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
An unreliable narrator makes for a good mystery, but in this adaptation of Alice Feeney’s psychological thriller, there are two. In this twisty thriller series, Tessa Thompson plays Anna, a reporter, opposite Jon Bernthal as Jack, a detective. The two are married but estranged, and when a body is discovered in their sleepy Georgia town, they compete to solve the case — with each believing the other is a prime suspect. Pablo Schreiber, Crystal Fox, Marin Ireland, and Sunita Mani are also part of the six-episode mystery.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel gets a sumptuous small-screen rendering in this limited series. It tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Kim Rossi Stuart), a Sicilian nobleman whose family weathers the changing tides of Italian life during Garibaldi’s conquest. When the Redshirts arrive in Palermo, Corbera and his family flee to his Donnafugata estate, where their situation quickly becomes precarious. As times change, the Corbera family will have to adapt to survive — or die on the vine.
Adapted from Michael Connelly’s book series, this legal drama stars Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Los Angeles’s most dedicated defense attorney, Mickey Haller, who works primarily out of the back of his car — a Lincoln, of course. (Mickey is indeed a fictional character, but the author borrowed the idea of a lawyer working out of his car from a real-life person.) Neve Campbell, Yaya DaCosta, and Cobie Smulders are also part of the series, which has been renewed for a fifth season.
The French thriller Lupin is faithful to its source material more in spirit than in letter, but therein lies its brilliance. Novelist Maurice Leblanc first wrote about the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin in the early 1900s, and he appeared in dozens of Leblanc’s novels. The TV series created by George Kay and François Uzan transposes the character to the present day in the form of Assane Diop (Omar Sy), a thief who reads Leblanc’s novels and models himself after Lupin in his quest to avenge his father.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen plays John Creasy, a former Special Forces mercenary battling extreme PTSD after an operation went wrong. He takes on a new job at the request of an old friend, Paul Rayburn (Bobby Cannavale). But when a skyscraper is flattened by a mysterious group of bombers, John finds himself back in the fire to protect Paul’s daughter, Poe (Billie Boullet), who witnessed the crime. The seven-episode adaptation of A.J. Quinnell’s book series includes Alice Braga and Scoot McNairy in the cast.
Gabriel Basso stars in this spy thriller as the titular FBI agent who, due to a misunderstanding during a terrorist attack, gets demoted to the Night Action desk, an emergency hotline for field agents. It’s a humdrum post — until, one night, the phone rings, and he teams up with a cybersecurity expert (Luciane Buchanan) to untangle an immense web of political conspiracies. With three seasons and counting, the suspenseful series is based on Matthew Quirk’s novel.
Gabriel García Márquez’s masterful magical realist novel recounts the intricate history of seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo, its narrative complexity and innate poetry defying countless literary conventions. Directed by Alex García López and Laura Mora, the adaptation stars Diego Vásquez as Buendía patriarch and Macondo founder José Arcadio. The ambitious series was filmed in García Márquez’s native Colombia (in Spanish), with the support of the author’s family.
A popular manga gets the live-action treatment with ONE PIECE, developed by Matt Owens and Steven Maeda from Eiichiro Oda’s series of the same name. The lively adventure tale follows a group of friends, led by pirate Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), who seek a storied treasure. Relying on their wits, their unique skills, and each other, the lovable crew journeys across a dynamic and imaginative world in search of their prize — but they aren’t the only ones after it.
Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) is about to marry into one of New England’s wealthiest families. But pristine private beaches, gorgeous mansions, and perfectly trimmed lawns can’t distract from the fact that there’s danger afoot. Because not long after the festivities kick off, a dead body washes ashore and everyone in the wedding party becomes a suspect. Based on Elin Hilderbrand’s hit novel, the six-episode murder mystery also stars Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy, and Jack Reynor.
This critically acclaimed drama stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, a uniquely gifted orphan in 1950s Kentucky who rises to the top of the international chess world while also grappling with addiction. Moses Ingram, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Marielle Heller, and Bill Camp co-star in the seven-episode thriller, based on the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. It won 11 Emmys, including awards for outstanding limited or anthology series and outstanding period costumes. Taylor Joy’s Beth has got as much style as she has strategy.
Shot in moody black-and-white, this stylish take on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 crime classic stars Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, a petty grifter in early ’60s New York who stumbles into a plum job when he’s hired to track down a wealthy businessman’s wayward son, Dickie (Johnny Flynn), and convince him to come home. But upon getting a taste of Dickie’s luxurious lifestyle in Italy, Ripley realizes he wants more out of the job than he was promised — and he can use his considerable talents to get it.
Michelle Buteau and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel created this fictionalized adaptation of Buteau’s book of the same name — a collection of candid autobiographical essays exploring romance, friendship, success, dreams, marriage, and more. The show stars Buteau as Mavis Beaumont, a talented New York stylist working on building her career and rebuilding her love life after a devastating breakup. Leaning on her best friends and her impeccable taste, Mavis strives to become her best, most unapologetic self amid the chaos.
Rachel Weisz stars in the limited series as a passionate but reckless literary academic who’s stuck in a personal and professional slump. Frustrated by her complicated relationship with her husband (John Slattery), she finds herself dangerously fixated on her handsome new colleague (Leo Woodall). As boundaries blur and secrets simmer, she’ll risk everything to bring her most scandalous fantasies to life. Julia May Jonas adapted the series from her novel of the same name.
Readers, cinephiles, and gamers will unite around this action-packed fantasy series. Adapted from Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, the show stars Henry Cavill (Seasons 1-3) and Liam Hemsworth (Season 4) as Geralt of Rivia, the white-haired, supernaturally capable monster-hunter, as he fulfills his destiny (though he’s personally skeptical of the concept). The Witcher universe has expanded over the years: There have been two animated movies, Nightmare of the Wolf and Sirens of the Deep, as well as a live-action prequel series, Blood Origin.
Based on Caroline Kepnes’s book series, this show, which ran for five seasons, dares you to follow a monstrously flawed protagonist — a stalker and serial killer who views his own disturbing behavior as mere evidence of his passion and romantic spirit. Penn Badgley stars as the now-infamous Joe Goldberg, a New York bookstore manager who develops an obsessive infatuation with a grad student and pursues her with alarming persistence. And that’s just Season 1!
Additional reporting by Phillipe Thao, Ananda Dillon, and Ashley Lee.
