23 Books That Need to be Adapted Into TV Series ASAP

The world-building in Leigh Bardugo's fantasy duology Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom is astounding. She creates a world as vast as the one found in Game of Thrones, but with a steampunk edge. The story begins in the Barrel, a subset of the larger city of Ketterdam that's inhabited by gangs and pleasure-seekers. It's there that the book introduces its group of young thieves and outcasts: Kaz, Inej, Nina, Jesper, Matthias, and Wylan. Despite all having different motives, they come together to stage an impossible heist at the impenetrable Ice Court.

What follows is a story filled with romance, rich backstories, politics, magic, and the kind of philosophical questions that drive TV's best fantasy series. Someone needs to page Netflix, because these two books are begging to become a television masterpiece.

Sophia Kinsella has crafted a flawed heroine of our times in My (Not So) Perfect Life's Katie. The slightly social-media-obsessed character tries to make every moment of her life look Instagram ready, but the truth is things are kind of a mess, and they only get worse when she loses her job. This life change forces her to return home, where she helps her family set up a holiday business. This witty book has the potential to be a sharp dramedy about the demands of social media and the need to accept that life doesn't need filters to be great.

All of your favourite fairy-tale characters get badass sci-fi upgrades in the space-set Lunar Chronicles series. In this world, Cinderella is a cyborg, Rapunzel lives alone on a satellite and is tasked with saving Earth, and Snow White possesses amazing powers that she refuses to use because she doesn't want to become evil like her Darth Vader-esque stepmother. Add in a plague, and you have a wild ride that melds science fiction, fantasy, and familiar characters to create an intricate story that could be TV's answer to Star Wars.

Postapocalyptic landscapes are a TV favourite, but this one comes with a twist. Station Eleven is set 20 years after a fictional swine flu ravages the world's population, and it focuses on a group of travelling actors and performers known as the Travelling Symphony. This beautiful book proves that even when it seems like there's no hope for the world, there's still power in art.

Justina Ireland's Dread Nation is a timely story of an alternate version of US history. In this world, the Civil War is halted by an uprising of the dead that forces both sides to work together. However, the aftermath still leaves minorities to do the most dangerous work, as Jane McKeene knows all too well. As part of the Native and Negro Education Act, she's being trained to fight zombies, even though that's not what she wants for her future. As if this premise wasn't intriguing enough, there's also a conspiracy involving disappearing families that adds a layer of mystery to what's already a provocative and thoughtful story of race in America.

If ever a book was begging to be turned into a half-hour comedy, it's Small Admissions. After her French boyfriend dumps her, Kate Pearson has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Then she lands a job interviewing kids for the prestigious Hudson Day School, where she meets a slew of desperate Park Avenue parents who will stop at nothing to get their children on the path to the Ivy League even though they haven't even mastered the alphabet yet.

Think Stranger Things with a side of quirk, and you have the nostalgic My Best Friend's Exorcism. Set in the '80s, the book follows two best friends, Abby and Gretchen, who end up in a bit of a situation after trying LSD. Basically, Gretchen ends up possessed, which understandably puts a strain on the girls' friendship. This funny, genuinely terrifying tale of high school and friendship is just what TV's horror genre needs right now.

Does anyone do upper-crust social commentary quite like Curtis Sittenfeld? Eligible is a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice that manages to incorporate a Bachelor-style dating show into the Bennet family's world. The book has plenty to say about class and gender expectations, but a TV series would allow the story to delve even deeper into the themes Sittenfeld introduces.

OK, this is a bit of a cheat, but hear us out. TV is all about the anthology series right now, and Hogarth is making Shakespeare cool again by having top authors like Margaret Atwood and Gillian Flynn reimagine the Bard's plays. Each season could tackle a different book — like Atwood's The Tempest update Hag-Seed — leading to the perfect marriage of literary greatness and anthology storytelling.

Universal is already working on a movie, but Final Girls would make for a nail-biting TV thriller. A decade after she survived a massacre, Quincy Carpenter is in the least enviable club around. Her status as a final girl means she never really feels safe — and maybe that's because she isn't.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was turned into the successful film Love, Simon. However, that's not nearly enough Simon, especially when there are two more books focusing on characters from Simon's life. It's about time TV served up a teen show that's not super dark, and Simon and his friends feel like the characters that could make this happen. The fact that the cast would be inclusive only makes the idea all the more appealing.

An 1800s boarding school setting already makes The Gemma Doyle Trilogy an appealing one to adapt. However, things only get better when you add in the fact that the main characters are basically witches. This series could be described as The Craft meets Downton Abbey, which is something the world desperately needs.

The Hate U Give is already being adapted into a film starring Amandla Stenberg, but we selfishly want a TV show too. Starr Carter takes readers inside the Black Lives Matter movement in a way that's intimate and groundbreaking. Her story — and her family's — would make for a compelling series.

Bisexual British Lords aren't typically the protagonists of TV shows, but they definitely should be. Set in the 18th century, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is a coming of age tale with a heaping side of adventure. It would require an outlet with some cash to do it justice, but this witty, romantic book would no doubt make an equally enthralling television series.

Tina Fontana has been an assistant for six years and she still has piles of debt. When a bank error gives her a chance to turn her life around, she finds herself dealing with an assistant uprising. Sharp and satirical, The Assistants' pseudo-heist story would feel right at home on AMC or TV Land.

Feudal Japan provides the perfect backdrop for the fantasy novel Flame in the Mist, and it would make a unique setting for a TV show as well. Despite being a gifted alchemist, Mariko is destined for an arranged marriage that will increase her family's social standing. Her life changes when a gang of bandits attempts to end her life before she can marry the son of the emperor, leaving her to infiltrate their ranks in hopes of finding answers.

Think The Office if it was all about Jim and Pam's slow-burn love story. Attachments, about a man who falls in love with a woman after being hired to read corporate emails, would make for an eccentric romantic comedy that, with any luck, would star Adam Scott.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a story of the American dream, warts and all. Spanning more than a decade, the book traces the Golden Age of comics through the eyes of cousins Sammy and Joe. This epic is far too intricate for a single film, but in this golden age of TV dramas, it would be right at home.

TV simply hasn't been the same since Downton Abbey left the airwaves. Enter The House at Riverton, a tale of secrets, murder, and upstairs/downstairs drama all told through the eyes of a young girl who spent years in the house as a servant.

Do you really know your neighbours? That's the question posed in The Couple Next Door, the tale of a seemingly perfect couple whose child goes missing under mysterious circumstances. The TV gods have already heard our pleas on this one, and a series is in the early stages of development, so keep your fingers crossed.

The story of bisexual teen living in a low-income neighbourhood is unexplored territory for television, but it really shouldn't be. That's why Ramona Blue's six-foot-tall, blue-haired teenager discovering her sexuality is exactly the kind of protagonist that TV needs more of.

An engrossing story of female obsession in 1920s New York, The Other Typist could follow in Killing Eve's footsteps as a drama that puts the relationships between complex women front and centre.

What does it mean to be good? Altruism takes over a couple's life in How to Be Good, a funny and thought-provoking tale of the weird things people do to make a marriage work. Go ahead and imagine a show starring Matthew Rhys as a man with a spiritual adviser and a mission and Allison Tolman as hissuper sceptical wife — you know you would stream that.