What Maisie Knew by Henry James

4 of 6
What Maisie Knew
352 pages; Penguin Classics
We're swooning! This exquisite, ahead-of-its-time novel, set in the 1890s, follows the story of young Maisie as she shuttles between her divorced mother and father until she's finally forced to choose a future of her own making. The modern-day film version stars Julianne Moore (yes!) and Alexander Skarsgard (double yes!) but lacks the turn-of-the-20th-century lace, carriages and fraught, terrifying innuendos of supposedly polite high society.
— Leigh Newman