Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau, 2014) by Bryan Stevenson, a memoir recounting his experience as a young defense attorney fighting for a death row inmate wrongfully convicted of murder, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the legal drama stars Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, and Rafe Spall.

In the Tall Grass is a film adaptation of a novella of the same name written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill, first published in Esquire magazine in 2012. The horror film, which follows a brother and sister as they venture into a field of grass in Kansas and find themselves trapped, is directed by Vincenzo Natali and stars Laysla De Oliveira, Harrison Gilbertson, Avery Whitted, and Patrick Wilson.

Jojo Rabbit is a film adaptation of Christine Leunens’s novel Caging Skies (Overlook Press, 2019), a dark comic story set in 1940s Vienna about a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth who discovers that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Directed by Taika Waititi, who also costars as an imaginary Adolf Hitler, the satire stars Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Rebel Wilson.

Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep (Scribner, 2013), the sequel to his 1977 classic The Shining, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Mike Flanagan. The movie picks up the story several decades later as a grown-up Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, meets a young girl with psychic powers similar to his own that he tries to protect from a supernatural cult of murderous nomads.

A Million Little Pieces (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2003), the controversial and fabricated best-selling memoir by James Frey, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Odessa Young, the film focuses on the life of a young writer seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

Malina, the 1971 novel by Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann, was rereleased by New Directions in May with a revised translation from the German by Philip Boehm and an introduction by Rachel Kushner. A screening of the 1991 film adaptation of the novel, directed by Werner Schroeter, was recently presented in celebration of the book.

Motherless Brooklyn, a film adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel of the same name, stars Edward Norton as Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome who attempts to solve the murder of his friend and mentor. Directed by Norton, the film’s cast includes Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Bruce Willis.

The King is a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s history plays known as the Henriad: Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, and Henry V. Directed by David Michôd, the film stars Ben Mendelsohn as King Henry IV, Timothée Chalamet as King Henry V, and Joel Edgerton as Falstaff. Michôd and Edgerton cowrote the screenplay.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s classic coming-of-age novel, has been adapted into a feature film directed by Greta Gerwig. The story takes place in the years following the American Civil War and revolves around the March sisters played by Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, Eliza Scanlen, and Emma Watson.

The Kitchen is a film adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novel of the same name written by Ollie Masters and illustrated by Ming Doyle. Directed by Andrea Berloff and starring Tiffany Haddish, Melissa McCarthy, and Elisabeth Moss, the film set in the 1970s follows three women in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen who take over organized crime operations after their husbands are sent to prison.