The best books to read – then watch – this summer

With upcoming adaptations of Wolf, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and more, we’ve compiled your must-read list to get ahead of the curve

If movie stars turned up on TV, we used to be in cameo territory. Now they’re right at home, and the up-coming schedules prove it – they’re about to light up with A-listers normally found at the multiplexes: Sigourney Weaver as a flower farmer, Julianne Moore causing a royal rumpus, Brie Larson teaching the Sixties a thing or two about feminism and science. Plus you can catch Harvey Keitel, Mark Ruffalo and more. What’s persuaded them? These blockbuster books…which is why you should read them too. 

The Telegraph’s reviewer praised the “bravura savagery” of Mo Hayder’s crime series, featuring detective Jack Caffery. So don’t expect this BBC series, named after the final book in the seven-title sequence, to be a gentling dose of cosy crime. Starring Ukweli Roach (Humans, The Midwich Cuckoos) as DCI Caffery, it sees the gumshoe attempt to track down a neighbour who he believes murdered his own son. Lovely. 

BBC One, due late July

Australian author Holly Ringland’s debut novel – a decade-spanning story of an orphaned girl taken on by her grandmother who lives on a flower farm – became a bestseller in 2019. Small wonder, then, that Amazon leapt on the rights. Now, it’s become the streamer’s big summer bet with Sigourney Weaver playing the grandmother, and a script by the team behind Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. Expect lush sets, lavish twists, and a dash of hokum to set it all off.