Fall is arguably the best season for book lovers who also happen to love a watch party. Between now and Thanksgiving, some of our favorite titles hit both the big and small screens, with a line-up that reads like a book club gone rogue. 

Steinbeck and Austen supply the prestige with required-reading nostalgia dressed up in glossy new adaptations. Suzanne Collins drags us back to Panem, because we still have a lot of feelings about the Hunger Games. (And in these times, how could we not?) Stephen King’s Carrie gets rebuilt for the age of viral humiliation and group chats. And Colleen Hoover’s Verity gets an all-star cast for its big screen debut. 

So put the kids to bed, grab a glass of wine, dim the lights and enjoy some time all to yourself, or with your partner. Some of these you can even watch with your tween who already swiped your copy off the nightstand, and a few might even inspire you to read a classic you’ve yet to crack.

Here’s what you’ll want to tune into this fall:

TV Shows

A Tale of Two Cities (MGM+, streaming now)
If you’ve been mourning Jon Snow since the Game of Thrones finale, Kit Harington is back, this time as the cynical Sydney Carton in Dickens’ most-quoted work. This four-part version leans into the love triangle and plays the whole thing as a psychological thriller rather than a dusty costume drama. Is it the best adaptation out there? Not exactly. Are the wigs questionable? Absolutely. But we’ll still be binging. Episodes started rolling out weekly in early September, so there are already a few waiting for you.

East of Eden (Netflix, streaming now)
Florence Pugh plays one of literature’s great villains, the beautiful and sociopathic Cathy Ames, in Zoe Kazan’s take on the Steinbeck saga. This version is less interested in the monster label than in what made her one. Steinbeck introduced Cathy as a “psychic monster” with a “malformed soul,” but Pugh has said the series hands her back some humanity, playing her as a full person shaped by what happened to her rather than a one-note villain. There’s also a lovely bit of symmetry to the whole project too, since Kazan’s grandfather Elia directed the 1955 James Dean film. Save this one for a night when you want something sweeping and a little devastating, with a cup of tea and zero interruptions. 

Carrie (Prime Video, Oct. 7)
Mike Flanagan drags Stephen King’s telekinetic teen into 2026, where the bullying is filmed on phones and the cruelty goes viral. (Presumably there are fewer nude teens than in the 1976 version. Please.) Eight episodes drop all at once, with Summer H. Howell as Carrie and Samantha Sloyan as her wildly unhinged mother. It’s scary, and the social-media update will hit closer to home than any parent of a middle-schooler will find comfortable. Save this one for after the kids are asleep only.

The Good Daughter (Peacock, Nov. 12)
Karin Slaughter fans have been waiting for an adaptation to hit the screen since the novel came out in 2018. For the uninitiated, the story follows two sisters, Charlie and Samantha, split apart by a violent attack when they were children and dragged back together decades later when another act of violence rips through their small Georgia town. Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy play them as grown women who love each other and can barely stand to be in the same room, which is frankly, quite relatable. It’s a family drama dressed up as a crime thriller, and Peacock is dropping all the episodes at once. Clear the weekend.

Movies

The Love Hypothesis (Prime Video, streaming now)
For the crowd that keeps “just one more chapter” promises to no one, Ali Hazelwood’s fake-dating STEM romance is now a film, with Lili Reinhart as the grad student and Tom Bateman as the grumpy professor she pretends to date. The book began as Star Wars fan fiction, a fact my husband informed me of. Maybe the Kylo Ren references will entice your partner to join your watch party, too. 

Verity (theaters, Oct. 2)
One Reddit reviewer called the book “like if Colleen Hoover tried to write a Gillian Flynn novel,” which was not necessarily meant as a compliment, and we’d concur. But the A-list cast has convinced us to give this one another shot. Dakota Johnson plays a struggling writer hired to finish a comatose author’s book series, Anne Hathaway is the author in question, and Josh Hartnett is the husband caught in between. 

Sense and Sensibility (theaters, Oct. 16)
This fresh take on the Austen classic comes from Working Title, the studio behind the 2005 Pride & Prejudice and 2020’s Emma. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles play the Dashwood sisters, with Caitríona Balfe as their mother. Director Georgia Oakley has said she wanted to skip the usual period gloss and keep it grounded and human, which feels right for a story that was always as much about money and survival as it was about romance. It has big shoes to fill after the beloved 1995 version, but a cast this good makes it feel worthy of a theater viewing.

Klara and the Sun (theaters, Oct. 23)
Jenna Ortega trades her usual brooding for something stranger and softer. She plays Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend bought to keep a sick teenager company, all wide-eyed hope as she studies human love from the outside. Taika Waititi directs, with Amy Adams as the mother facing an impossible choice. It’s also not the first Ishiguro novel to get the prestige treatment. The Nobel laureate is the mind behind Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, both devastating in their own right. If your kid’s attachment to their screen has been keeping you up at night, this is the one that will follow you home.

Wildwood (theaters, Oct. 23)
Finally, one you can watch with the kids. From Laika, the stop-motion studio behind Coraline, comes the story of a Portland seventh-grader whose baby brother gets carried off into a magical forest by a flock of crows. The voice cast is stacked, including Mahershala Ali, Carey Mulligan and Angela Bassett. Gorgeous, a little eerie, and a solid excuse for family movie night.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (theaters, Nov. 20)
We have been devouring dystopia since the first Hunger Games book showed up on our nightstands, and the appetite has only grown as the real world keeps trying to one-up it. This prequel rewinds to the 50th Games and a teenage Haymitch, decades before the arena turned him into the drunk we met in the original trilogy. Joseph Zada takes the lead, with Ralph Fiennes, Elle Fanning and Jesse Plemons filling out the Capitol. Suzanne Collins never writes a prequel without a point to make about power, so expect the satire to cut close.