Carleen Brice’s award-winning debut novel about a daughter coming home to care for her alcoholic mother was adapted into the Lifetime movie Sins of the Mother, which starred singer Jill Scott and won the 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding TV Movie.
2. Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
James Patterson…on Lifetime? Yes, indeed. Not once, but twice! First, this suspenseful love story about a woman learning about her missing boyfriend’s other life via a diary written by the mother of his child was adapted into a film starring Christina Applegate and Jonathan Schaech.
3. Sea Change
Lifetime’s got its finger on that YA pulse, adapting Aimee Friedman’s supernatural novel for young adults about a teen girl in a new town torn between a hot townie and a hot half-man, half-sea creature into a movie starring newcomer Emily Rudd and Supernatural’s Keenan Tracey.
4. The Tenth Circle
A college student is raped by her ex-boyfriend, who soon turns up dead, having jumped off a bridge. Was it suicide, or was he pushed? Find out in this 2008 adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s page-turner, starring Kelly Preston and Brittany Robertson.
5. The Pilot’s Wife
Anita Shreve’s gripping novel about a wife who begins to investigate her pilot husband’s mysterious death — with, you guessed it, upsetting results! — was adapted for television in 2002 with Christine Lahti and Campbell Scott at the helm.
6. We Were the Mulvaneys
This moving 1996 novel from the venerable Joyce Carol Oates about a family grappling with a daughter’s rape was an Oprah’s Book Club Pick in 2001 and, in 2002, made into a Lifetime movie starring Blythe Danner and Beau Bridges. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards.
7. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Featuring Emily Watson, Gretchen Mol, and Dermot Mulroney, this 2008 movie is based on a sprawling novel by Kim Edwards about twins separated at birth by their doctor father who delivered them – a split-second decision that changed all of their lives forever.
8. Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
Based on the book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher, this film recreates shocking true events: the 2006 shooting of a group of Amish schoolgirls in their Pennsylvania classroom, and the Amish community’s inspiring spirit in the aftermath.
9. Sundays at Tiffany’s
James Patterson’s back! This whimsical adaptation of Patterson’s 2008 book, co-authored with Gabrielle Charbonnet, features Alyssa Milano, Ivan Sergei, and Stockard Channing in a story about a woman confronted by her childhood imaginary friend, now grown and hot and fully human. Okay, James Patterson!
