9. Touchstone

In England in 1926, New Yorker Harris Stuyvesant is tracking the bomber who blew up his sweetheart and permanently injured his brother. A sinister operative leads him to Bennett Grey, whose injuries in World War I make him terrifyingly sensitive to every movement and gesture and who has hidden himself in Cornwall. These three, Grey's former lover Lady Laura Hurleigh, and his sister, Sarah, form the points of an intricate star drawn around the old families and the coming general strike, the legacy of the war, and the desperation of poverty and class struggle. King works her mastery not only in a vivid and sometimes terrifying psychological study but also through gorgeous evocation of the English landscape, detailed description of the dynamics in a country house inhabited by the same family for half a millennium, and perceptive analysis of the intricate complexities of politics, power and gender, and social justice. Cinematic in the intensity of its shifting points of view and boasting characters so charismatic that we can hear not only their voices but also the sound of their breathing,