W. Somerset Maugham

Born with a clubfoot, Philip is orphaned as a child and raised by unsympathetic relatives. Sent to a boarding school where he has difficulty fitting in, he grows up with an intense longing for love, art, and experience. After failing to become an artist in Paris, he begins medical studies in London, where he meets Mildred, a cold-hearted waitress with whom he falls into a powerful, tortured, life-altering love affair. This is the most autobiographical...

Leaving wealth and loved ones behind, Larry Darrell journeys to the mountains of India in search of spiritual wisdom.

Set in the 1920s. A young English couple, Walter a middle class doctor and Kitty, an upper-class woman, get married for all the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai. Kitty falls in love with someone else. When Walter discovers her infidelity, in an act of vengeance, he accepts a job in a remote village in China that is being ravaged by a deadly epidemic. He takes his wife along and their journey brings meaning to their relationship and gives them...

Set on a rubber plantation in Malaya, this story centers on a woman's reasons for killing a man who was a close family friend.