MUMBAI: Here’s the review of the third book in the 10-part series that features the books being adapted into Hollywood movies in the year 2014.

Winter's Tale – Mark Helprin

This Valentine Day, believe in miracles...

Starring Golden Globe award winner Colin Farrell (Alexander, In Brudges) and Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey), the live action motion picture adaptation of Mark Helprin’s bestselling 1983 romantic fantasy epic will soon make your Valentine Day getaway a New York City adventure. The film adaptation of the classic 1983 novel by Mark Helprin vacillates between 1916 and present-day Manhattan.

Take your Valentine on a journey to New York of the Belle Epoque and follow the journey of Peter Lake (Farrell), a thief who falls in love with Beverly Penn (Brown Findlay), a dying girl who has tuberculosis and occupies one of the houses he breaks into. Lake is saved from the insane Irish gangster Pearly Soames, played by Academy Award winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and his henchmen by Athansor, a mysterious white horse who becomes his guardian angel. Thus begins the love between the middle-aged Irishman and Beverly Penn, a young girl who is dying.

Academy Award winning director Avika Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) called this film his passion project resulting in him producing and writing the screenplay for it.

The Newsday called the book, “a gifted writer’s love affair with the language”. On Good Reads, Winter’s Tale has a ranking of 4.05 based on 9,318 ratings.

Soon after its release, Winter’s Tale was praised on the front cover of the New York Times Book Review (NYTBR), courtesy Benjamin De Mott. It was thought to be “funny, thoughtful, passionate and large-souled”.

Winter’s Tale will cast its romantic magical spell in India next Friday, 14 February.

(Watch out for the next one to add to your booklist…!)