Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway (not that one), is having a moment. She’s the main character of the popular 2020 novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, adapted as a film directed by Chloé Zhao in 2025. O’Farrell writes Anne (called Agnes in the novel) as a woman with great interiority and depth who occupies a world of nature and magic foreign to that of her workaholic husband.

But before Hamnet centered Shakespeare's wife on screen, she was already making waves on Broadway. Anne Hathaway is a main character in & Juliet, the jukebox musical that starts where Shakespeare’s most classic love story leaves off — with a new ending that Anne herself pitches to her husband. Hamnet fans who loved exploring the world of Shakespeare from a woman’s perspective have the chance to do so again through & Juliet.

Get & Juliet tickets now.

Since its release in 2019, Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient has remained on top of Goodreads’s Most Read books year after year. The thriller follows Theo, a psychotherapist who becomes obsessed with his patient Alicia, who killed her husband with no known motive and hasn’t spoken since. Her notoriety makes her a public fascination, and her career as an artist skyrockets while she remains behind bars.

Alicia isn’t the first woman to experience a boom in fame after (allegedly) murdering a lover — just look to Chicago's Roxie Hart. With the help of vaudeville star and fellow inmate Velma Kelly, she realizes she can game the criminal justice system to make her dreams of stardom come true. Though Alicia and Roxie have different approaches to their imprisonment, The Silent Patient fans may be razzle-dazzled by the long-running musical.

Get Chicago tickets now.

Liann Zhang’s debut novel, Julie Chan Is Dead, became an international bestseller and made NPR’s “Books We Love” list in 2025. The story follows Julie Chan, a down-on-her luck cashier who finds her estranged influencer twin dead and decides to step into her life. In ditching her paycheck-to-paycheck grind, Julie chases the modern American dream: one filled with minimal work, Manhattan high-rises, more free products than anyone could ever use.

But as Julie discovers, the American dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a lesson each generation must re-learn, as Arthur Miller knew when he wrote the now-classic Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman is buried under the weight of expectation, spinning lies and exaggerations to make it seem like he’s living the dream while becoming more and more detached from reality.

Every Brilliant Thing is the story of one person’s attempt to chronicle everything that makes life worth living in the face of darkness. Though the subject matter is heavy, the experience of the show is ultimately meant to be joyful, as the audience reflects on the beautiful things in their own lives.

The play’s heartfelt handling of mental illness brings to mind Matt Haig’s book The Midnight Library, which earned international acclaim when it was published in 2020. After a suicide attempt, Nora Seed enters a limbo world in the form of a library and goes on a fantastical journey through the different versions of what her life could have been. All the alternate lives she steps into, however, lead her to realize she loved her original life, warts and all.

Get Every Brilliant Thing tickets now.

Dark academia queen R.F. Kuang’s latest book Katabasis is all about a descent to hell. In fact, the title is literally the Greek word for “a journey to the underworld.” Kuang researched mythology stories from all over the world to craft the novel, which means she must have read the famous Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The long-running musical Hadestown is all about Orpheus, Eurydice, and their own journey to hell, brought to life with stunning Broadway magic. If Katabasis fans were moved by Kuang’s portrayal of hell, they will be captivated by Anaïs Mitchell’s unique, jazzy take on the Greek myth that preceded all other stories of couples braving the underworld together.

Get Hadestown tickets now.

Broadway is filled with musical biopics, but there’s something special about Just in Time, based on the life of legendary singer and actor Bobby Darin. Staged as if the theatre is one big nightclub, the show is intimate and personable thanks to the way Darin takes you through his life like a tour guide.

Darin got his start as a songwriter for Connie Francis, with whom he had a romance, and his later Hollywood career led to a stormy marriage with co-star Sandra Dee. Those tumultuous relationships might remind theatregoers of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, in which an aging actress recounts her relationships in and out of showbiz. Fans of drama and romance in Hollywood’s Golden Age will be excited to see it play out on stage.

Get Just in Time tickets now.

One of the most popular new books of 2025, Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon takes readers on a cozy fantasy journey into an alternate world that resembles our own. Cheerful, knowing Hana and reluctant, disbelieving Kei make the perfect push-and-pull couple, growing closer the more they rankle each other.

Maybe Happy Ending may be more sci-fi than fantasy, but Water Moon fans can’t help but see the similarities. Oliver and Claire, two retired robots in a near-futuristic Korea, bicker like only enemies-to-lovers can. They break out of their familiar world into one both magical and dangerous to them, and when they come to the end of their journey, they must take a leap of faith neither could have believed possible. It’s the perfect musical for readers who enjoyed Yambao’s book.

Get Maybe Happy Ending tickets now.

The biggest draw of Moulin Rouge! The Musical — aside from the pop-filled score and the glamorous set to rival the movie it’s based on — is the forbidden romance between Christian and Satine. Romance readers know this trope well. It's part of the success of Ali Hazelwood’s romantasy book Bride, about a vampire who reluctantly enters a tense political marriage with a werewolf, her kind’s mortal enemy.

Though Moulin Rouge! isn't a fantasy story, there’s plenty of common ground between the novel and the Broadway musical for romance lovers. Both Satine and Misery swear they would never fall for someone like Christian or Lowe, setting up their inevitable chemistry. It’s only a matter of time until their connection, obvious to us, becomes undeniable to them.

Get Moulin Rouge! The Musical tickets now.

Andy Weir’s hugely popular 2021 book Project Hail Mary is currently the most-read book of the year on Goodreads, partly thanks to the 2026 film adaptation. In the book, Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship with total amnesia, unaware he is the last survivor on a last-chance mission to save humanity. Slowly, he comes to realize the impossible task before him: save Earth or die trying.

If you were thrilled with the stakes of Ryland’s life-or-death mission, check out Operation Mincemeat. There’s no sci-fi here, but the true story is almost wilder than fiction. The Tony-winning musical follows British MI5 agents cooking up a bonkers scheme to cover up an Allied invasion during World War II. Like Project Hail Mary, Operation Mincemeat is clever and certainly not afraid to be silly.

Get Operation Mincemeat tickets now.

James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, one of the most popular books of 2023, is set in Chicken Hill, a bygone neighborhood of mostly Black and Jewish residents in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. McBride’s book explores how these two communities shared the common ground of their oppression by white people despite their differences.

The 1975 musical Ragtime deals with strikingly similar themes. Ragtime centers a Black pianist from Harlem, a Latvian Jewish immigrant on the Lower East Side, and a wealthy white matriarch from New Rochelle. Their lives collide in seismic ways, lining up with major historical events and figures from the turn of the 20th century.

If you like the Ragtime musical, you can also read its source material: E. L. Doctorow's same-named 1975 book.

Get Ragtime tickets now.

Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear took the world by storm when it was published earlier this year, sparking debate about the most essential elements of old-fashioned life. To her millions of Instagram followers, Natalie Heller Mills seems to be living a perfect life on her family ranch — until she wakes up in the 19th century, forced to live the real version of the idealized life she sells online.

If you love a time-travel plot — and one about being trapped somewhere until you learn an important lesson — 2026 Best Musical Tony Award winner Schmigadoon! is for you. Lost in the woods, modern-day couple Josh and Melissa stumble into Schmigadoon, a town straight out of Broadway's Golden Age of musicals from the 1940s and '50s. They find themselves at the center of their very own musical, unable to return home until they figure out their own happy ending.

Get Schmigadoon! tickets now.

Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods is a slow-burn mystery, told from the perspective of a remote summer camp's workers in the days after a teenage girl goes missing in 1975. Moore’s setup exposes the tricky social dynamics around the wealthy Van Laar family, the summer camp kids, and the local town residents are often relegated to the sidelines by the needs and wants of the upper class.

Readers who are drawn to haunted teens, small-town intrigue, and a slowly unraveling mystery in a period setting are the perfect audience for Stranger Things: The First Shadow. This prequel to the popular Netflix series, set in 1950, earned critical acclaim and numerous awards for its special effects, and you don't need prior Stranger Things knowledge to enjoy the play.

Get Stranger Things: The First Shadow tickets now.

Vampires are having a moment in the sun. The new musical The Lost Boys, which adapts the 1987 cult classic movie about a California vampire gang who targets a newly arrived family, has been one of the season’s biggest hits. Effortlessly cool leader David instantly captivated audiences, with actor Ali Louis Bourzgui winning a Tony for his portrayal of the glam-rock vampire. But before there was David, there was Lestat de Lioncourt.

The Vampire Lestat, book two of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, begins as Lestat awakens in 1984 from a deep sleep, stirred back to life by rock music. He decides to reinvent himself as a modern rock star and tells his story to the world through song. Fans of Lestat will certainly see his influence in David — the two even crossed over when Sam Reid, who plays Lestat in the book's TV adaptation, met up with Bourzgui after a Lost Boys performance.

Get The Lost Boys tickets now.

Grady Hendrix’s sharp, funny prose mixed and enticingly chilling concepts have made his novels a staple for any horror lover. In How to Sell a Haunted House, readers praised his laugh-out-loud writing and his willingness to get ridiculous, which just feels right for a plot involving creepy haunted puppets.

The Rocky Horror Show could be considered the ancestor of all campy horror that exists today. Written by Richard O’Brien to satirize the sci-fi and B-horror movies of the 1950s, it rocketed into cult classic status thanks, in part, to its immortalization in the 1975 film adaptation. The musical's star-studded new Broadway revival is sure to appeal to Grady Hendrix fans, horror comedy fans, and old and new audiences alike.

Get The Rocky Horror Show tickets now.

Emily Henry has taken over the romance genre in recent years. Her book Funny Story is no exception — it was voted the top romance book of 2024 on Goodreads. Funny Story follows a pair of opposites, Daphne and Miles, in an unlikely situation who grow to appreciate that they just might be what the other one needs.

For readers looking for a sweet, opposites-attract love story on stage, look no further than Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). In this Broadway musical, easygoing Brit Dougal crosses paths with no-nonsense Robin, a New Yorker who’s got places to be. Like Henry’s books, Two Strangers has all the makings of a good rom-com, with catchy songs to boot. And isn’t all romance made better by a little song and dance?

Get Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) tickets now.