By Etty Hillesum
400 pages; Picador

Hillesum was a Dutch Jew in World War II. This diary is the only thing I've read that deals with a woman coming into her sexuality in that war. She writes about an affair with her therapist during the early part of the war. Later, in 1942, the Nazis rounded up Dutch Jews, and she was sent to a transit camp near the German border. She was beautiful, and she was offered help escaping the camp, but she chose to stay with her family. She's such an unsung hero in my eyes, and I want to tell her story as a film.

— Julianna Marguiles