Later this month, Kirkus will offer in-depth columns on the Netflix movie version of J.A. White’s children’s horror-fantasy novel, Nightbooks (premiering Sept. 15), and the Apple TV+ series Foundation (premiering Sept. 24), based on Isaac Asimov’s Hugo Award-winning SF saga. In the meantime, here are a few other book-to-screen adaptations to watch this month, as summer shades into fall:

Sept. 3: Worth (Film Premiere, Netflix)

Michael Keaton plays attorney Kenneth R. Feinberg in this movie adaptation of Feinberg’s 2005 nonfiction book, What Is Life Worth? The author was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to administer a multibillion-dollar September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. In order to receive payments, the families had to agree not to bring lawsuits against United or American Airlines, whose planes were hijacked that day. Feinberg had the unenviable task of determining how much each family would receive, based on what the deceased person would have earned if they’d lived a full lifetime—in effect, valuing people’s lives in dollars and cents. Stanley Tucci, who can always be counted on for a nuanced performance, plays Charles Wolf, the real-life widower of one of the victims. The film promises to be a powerful exploration of grief, and what fairness means in the wake of a tragedy. Feinberg would return to similar themes in his 2012 book, Who Gets What, which Kirkus’ reviewer called “opportunity to get to know a man whose work has affected thousands”—and the same can certainly be said for this film.

Sept. 12: American Rust (Miniseries Premiere, Showtime)

This new nine-episode miniseries is based on Philipp Meyer’s 2009 novel, set in the crumbling Pennsylvania steel town of Buell. The story initially follows two young men, Isaac English (played by David Alvarez in the series) and Billy Poe (Things Heard and Seen’s Alex Neustadter), who both feel stuck in the dead-end town. Isaac, using stolen money, decides to make his way to California to attend college, and Billy tags along, at first—but on the way, Isaac accidentally kills a man. Police soon believe that Billy, who’s been in trouble with the law before, is the murderer. Other major characters include local police chief Bud Harris (Emmy winner Jeff Daniels, who’s an executive producer for the series) and Billy’s mother, Grace (The Affair’s Maura Tierney). Kirkus’ reviewer called the book “a grimly powerful hybrid: provocative literary fiction crossed with a propulsive thriller”; hopefully, the same can be said for the series, as Daniels and Tierney’s work is always worth watching.

Sept. 29: No One Gets Out Alive (Film Premiere, Netflix)

In British author Adam Nevill’s 2015 horror novel, a young woman named Stephanie Jones moves into a rented room in a house in Birmingham, England, with a colorful past; it once housed a spiritualist group called the Friends of Light, and later, a pair of father/son murderers. As she deals with her creepy landlord and his cousin, she discovers that the house is currently haunted by a restless spirit called Black Maggie. Kirkus’ reviewer gave this “macabre, otherworldly tale” a positive review. The movie version, directed by Santiago Menghini in his feature debut, features 68 Whiskey’s Cristina Rodio, as well as Marc Menchaca as the landlord; the latter was incredibly creepy in last year’s horror movie Alone, in which he played a serial killer. There’s no trailer yet, but there’s a promising glimpse of the film, which seems to shift the story’s locale to the United States, in a new Netflix promo.

Sept. 30: Big Sky (Season 2 Premiere, ABC)

The first season of this popular TV series was based on bestselling author C.J. Box’s 2013 gritty mystery novel The Highway, in which Montana investigators looked into the kidnapping of two teenagers by a truck-driving serial-killer known as the Lizard King. This new season will loosely adapt the second novel in Box’s series, 2015’s Badlands, in which detective Cassandra Dewell looks into the case of a car accident that isn’t as simple as it seems; Kirkus reviewer called the novel “a suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural.” Kylie Bunbury, who was excellent in the short-lived baseball series Pitch, plays Dewell in the Big Sky show, and she receives fine support from Vikings’ Kathryn Winnick as fellow investigator Jenny Hoyt. Other promising cast members this season include The Sopranos’ Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Logan Marshall-Green, who gave a stellar performance in the underseen 2018 horror/SF film Upgrade.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.