William Somerset Maugham

Set in a villa in the hills above Florence, this moving novel reveals the power of desperate love. Mary Panton ignores her desires as she contemplates her loveless marriage, but a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence that destroys her serenity.

Human nature and sexuality are not easy to overcome, to say the least. Anyone who has tried to uphold beliefs and ideals that went against the nature of what their own bodies would require - from nourishment to sex, and everything in between - failed quite miserably. This is precisely the point that W. Somerset …