If you’re still trying to choose between completely immersing yourself in the amazing fall TV lineup or ticking books off your reading list, you can just stop that right now. You can have both and even better—we’ve curated a spectacular reading list based off your favorite TV shows.
8 Books to Read Based on Your Favorite TV Shows
Before the Fall
Read: BEFORE THE FALL by Noah Hawley
Watch: Manifest (NBC)
In the brand-new NBC drama Manifest, a hundred or so souls aboard Montego Air Flight 828 are stunned to learn they've been presumed dead for five years upon landing. Whoa. This seems like the kind of mystery that might take more than a full season to solve. In between episodes, you might enjoy Noah Hawley's novel BEFORE THE FALL. Though the conspiracy surrounding the plane crash in BEFORE THE FALL is not quite as bizarre, both mysteries leave us wondering: Why did this event happen to these people in particular?
Before the Fall
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We Are Not Ourselves
Read: WE ARE NOT OURSELVES by Matthew Thomas
Watch: This Is Us (NBC)
We implore you not to miss a single minute of This Is Us this season. And while you're catching up with The Big Three, get into Matthew Thomas's sweeping family saga, WE ARE NOT OURSELVES. Not only did Stephen King call WE ARE NOT OURSELVES the best novel he's read so far this year, but this novel covers a full range of human emotions which This Is Us fans are sure to appreciate.
We Are Not Ourselves
The promise and tragedy of post-war America is charted in this riveting portrait of an Irish-American family as they chase the American Dream. It is at once expansive and exquisitely detailed, but what readers will remember most is the huge heart at its core. It heralds the arrival of a major new talent in contemporary fiction and is destined to be an American classic.
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Mr. Mercedes
Read: MR. MERCEDES by Stephen King
Watch: Mr. Mercedes (Audience Network)
Speaking of Stephen King—king of our TBRs and DVRs—the second season of Mr. Mercedes is slated to send chills down our spines this fall. Bill Hodges is a depressed retired cop who is still haunted by the mass murderer he never caught—a man who drove a stolen Mercedes into a crowd. Then Hodges gets a letter from the Mercedes killer, threatening to strike again, and he knows he must stop the killer himself.
Mr. Mercedes
Retired cop Bill Hodges feels depressed and purposeless, still haunted by the one that got away—a sadistic killer who drove a Mercedes into the crowd at a job fair. But when he receives a taunting letter from someone claiming to be the Mercedes killer, Hodges will have to come out of retirement to prevent another massacre.
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I'm Judging You
Read: I'M JUDGING YOU by Luvvie Ajayi
Watch: Insecure (HBO)
Don't lie; when the third season of Insecure premiered, you were totally judging Issa and Molly's questionable life choices. I think we can agree Issa, Molly, and some of our messy faves could learn a thing or two from Luvvie Ajayi's do-better manual, I'M JUDGING YOU. Ajayi—who cohosts the Jesus and Jollof podcast with Insecure actress Yvonne Orji—serves up necessary advice for the masses in this hilarious book of essays.
I'm Judging You
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You
Read: YOU by Caroline Kepnes
Watch: You (Lifetime)
Caroline Kepnes's novel YOU takes us inside the mind of a deranged stalker and it's even creepier than it sounds. When a bookseller encounters a beautiful customer, he tracks her down via her credit card and quickly inserts himself into her life. Penn Badgley stars as the book-lover-turned-stalker in the Lifetime series adaptation of You.
You
Joe doesn’t like artisanal soda, trust fund kids, Dan Brown, Brooklyn hipsters, or Vice magazine. He does, however, like you, ever since you walked into his East Village bookshop looking like Natalie Portman. Shame that Joe is a cold-blooded killer and adept stalker. In the all-too-rare second-person narrative, YOU takes place inside the obsessed brain of Joe Goldberg, who’ll stop at nothing to make boho-wannabe Guinevere Beck (the “you” of Kepnes’s page-turning novel) his. Crazy like:
Best crazy moment: The DA VINCI CODE reading marathon.
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Foe
Read: FOE by Iain Reid
Watch: Maniac (Netflix)
Maniac—a new Netflix series starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill—begins when two strangers are lured into a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. But what could go wrong when you completely submit body—your freedom—to the whims of others? The couple in Iain Reid's psychological thriller find themselves in a similar situation when a man in a suit visits them at their secluded home. The strange man informs them that the husband has been randomly selected to participate in the OuterMore program which will take him very far away—and that's only the start of the strange events that unravel this couple's marriage.
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Reincarnation Blues
Read: REINCARNATION BLUES by Michael Poore
Watch: The Good Place (NBC)
Spoiler alert: Season 2 of The Good Place ends with Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason evading eternal damnation and getting a second chance at life on earth. What the fork?! The protagonist of REINCARNATION BLUES knows a thing about second chances at life . . . 9,995 chances to be exact. Milo has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn't make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.
Reincarnation Blues
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The Wangs vs. the World
Read: THE WANGS VS THE WORLD by Jade Chang
Watch: Fresh Off the Boat (ABC)
The Wangs of THE WANGS VS THE WORLD and the Huangs of Fresh Off the Boat can both relate to the particular struggles that come with navigating life in America as immigrants. In Jade Chang's hilarious novel, a financial crisis claims the cosmetics empire businessman Charles Wang has built—and all the luxuries his family enjoyed. So he packs two of his children into the only car he still owns, and they set out on a cross-country journey from their foreclosed Bel-Air home and retreat to upstate New York with the eldest Wang daughter, Saina.
The Wangs vs. the World
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