Larry Darrell, a World War I veteran haunted by his memories of the war, abandons his easy life for first Paris and then a Tibetan monastery.

"From a tormented orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. His cravings take him to Paris at age eighteen to try his hand at art, then back to London to study medicine. But even so, nothing can sate his nagging hunger for experience. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever." --

Mrs. Craddock (1902) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Controversial for its portrayal of infidelity and marriage across social classes, Mrs. Craddock was instrumental in establishing Maugham's reputation as a leading author of the late Victorian era. Due to its content, the novel appeared exclusively in Bowdlerized form until Maugham saw it republished in 1938. Bertha Ley has always been independent. Orphaned at a young age, she comes into a sizable...

"In 1921 Penang, when Willie, a famed writer and old friend of her husband's, arrives for an extended stay, Lesley, as her friendship with Willie grows, makes a dangerous decision to confide in him about life in the Straits, including her relationship with a charismatic Chinese revolutionary-a confession that has devastating consequences."--

He was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the most famous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own true story has never been fully told. At last, the fascinating truth is revealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer Selina Hastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personal correspondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his...

Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1928 collection of loosely linked stories by W. Somerset Maugham. It is partly based on the author's experience as a member of British Intelligence in Europe during the First World War.

Disc 1: If you could only cook: A down-on-her-luck cook charms a millionaire into playing along as her husband so they can get work. Too many husbands: A woman finds herself legally wed to two men. Disc 2: My sister Eileen: A writer, who has a pretty, younger sister, brings a host of eccentrics through their Greenwich Village apartment. She wouldn't say yes: A button-down psychiatrist battles her patient's impulses while suppressing her own.

Struggling to make up her mind whether or not to marry a wealthy older man, Mary Leonard sets out on a fateful drive into the hills about Florence, where she encounters a handsome stranger whose passions will forever alter her life.