Some books are great because they tell a story you can disappear into. Others make you stop and think, How has nobody made this into a movie yet?

That was the feeling behind this list.

• Furious Hours could be a Southern Gothic true-crime drama.
• Do Tell could be a glamorous Hollywood noir.
• Tom Lake could be an intimate family drama.
• The Round House could be a tense coming-of-age mystery.
• The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle could be a quiet, emotional story about love, regret, and second chances.

#1 Furious Hours by Casey Cep

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee feels almost too strange to be true.

At the center is Willie Maxwell, an Alabama preacher whose family members died under suspicious circumstances while he collected life insurance money. In 1977, Maxwell himself was shot at his stepdaughter’s funeral in front of hundreds of people. His killer, Robert Burns, was later represented by the same lawyer who had previously represented Maxwell. And then there is Harper Lee, sitting in the courtroom and trying to turn the whole story into a book of her own.

That last part is probably what makes the story so interesting.

Harper Lee spent years researching the case and apparently worked on a book about it, reportedly titled The Reverend. But the manuscript was never published, and no complete version has ever surfaced. Even after Lee’s death, it remained unclear exactly how much she wrote and what happened to the project.

So the movie would not just be about a murder.

It could be about Harper Lee trying to write another great book after To Kill a Mockingbird. It could move between the disturbing Maxwell case, the courtroom, and Lee’s increasingly complicated relationship with the story she wanted to tell.

And honestly, that is the part that makes this feel cinematic. There is already a mystery inside the mystery.

#2 Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch

Do Tell takes us into Golden Age Hollywood. The main character, Edie O’Dare, is a struggling actress who begins working as a source for a gossip columnist. Her life changes when a young actress gives her a letter alleging an assault by an A-list actor.

From there, Edie discovers that gossip can be a form of power. She could not get much control over her career as an actress, but suddenly she has influence over people who once had power over her. At the same time, she is dealing with the consequences of exposing secrets about people she knows.

It has everything you’d want visually: Hollywood parties, costumes, old movie sets, actresses trying to stay relevant, gossip columnists collecting information, and people desperately protecting their reputations.

#3 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Tom Lake would be a very different kind of movie.

There is no serial killer to chase. No huge courtroom twist. No Hollywood conspiracy.

Instead, there is a family, an orchard, a mother telling her daughters about a relationship she had years earlier, and the strange realization that your parents had entire lives before you existed.

The story takes place during the spring of 2020, when Lara’s three adult daughters return to the family’s Michigan orchard. While they pick cherries, Lara tells them about Peter Duke, the famous actor she once dated while working at a theater company called Tom Lake.

That setup sounds simple, but it has a lot going on underneath.

The daughters know their mother as their mother. Suddenly they are hearing about her as a young woman, an actress, and someone’s girlfriend. And naturally, the more they hear, the more they start questioning what they thought they knew about her.

That feels like something movies sometimes do really well: take an ordinary family conversation and make it emotionally enormous.

There is also an obvious casting thought here. Meryl Streep narrated the audiobook, and when asked about adapting Tom Lake, Patchett said she would be happy to have Streep play anything, although she also made clear that film adaptations are not something she particularly wants for herself.

Still, it is hard not to imagine Streep as Lara.

#4 The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House is probably the most difficult book on this list to adapt.

It is also one of the ones that feels most deserving of it.

Louise Erdrich’s 2012 novel follows Joe, a 13-year-old boy whose mother is brutally attacked. His father, a tribal judge, struggles to pursue justice, and Joe begins investigating the crime himself.

What makes the book special is that it does not treat the mystery as just a puzzle.

Joe is still a kid.

He is trying to understand something that adults around him cannot easily fix. That changes the entire feeling of the story. There is anger in it, but also confusion. Curiosity turns into obsession. Childhood starts disappearing.

One reader described the book as richly written but still remarkably fluid, with interesting characters and moral depth without becoming heavy or depressing.

That is exactly why a film adaptation would have to be handled carefully. The danger would be making it too much of a conventional crime thriller. And visually, there is plenty to work with: the North Dakota landscape, the round house itself, and the reservation.

#5 The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

Albert Entwistle is a quiet postman in northern England who has spent most of his life keeping to himself. When he is forced to retire at 65, the routine that has protected him for decades suddenly disappears. He starts thinking about everything he never did — and, most importantly, the man he loved and lost many years ago.

Albert is not a larger-than-life character. Quite the opposite. He is the kind of person you might pass on the street without knowing anything about him.

And that is exactly the point.

The story has its predictable moments, and some readers have found the ending a little too neat. But even those criticisms do not really change the central idea: it is never too late to start living differently.

And that is a pretty good reason for a movie.