W. Somerset Maugham

A woman agrees to emigrate to Malaya with her husband, but colonial life is not what she expected.

A socialite is shocked when her frumpy sister-in-law announces her marriage to a foppish young man. Over the next two years, however, the homebody turns into a popular fashionista.

A missionary, his wife, and a prostitute are among the guests stranded at a tropical hotel during the rainy season.

A French farmgirl is assaulted by a German soldier, but he begins to become obsessed by her.

The prim spinster sister of a missionary in the South Seas determines to reform a rascally beachcomber.

Mark, a new arrival at a Malay colony, befriends Tim and Olive, a pair of unusually close siblings who isolate themselves from the other colonists and speak in their own made-up language.

The president of a South American country changes his country's divorce laws for his own benefit.

A colonial administrator's act of cowardice gets him sent home from the East, but he seems oblivious to the contempt with which he is viewed. Surely his friendly, companionable relationship with his wife seems to him quite unchanged.

A married woman falls for a younger man, and wonders whether to confess to her husband.

Margaret convinces her lover to murder her husband after she becomes pregnant. The murder is investigated by a dogged policeman whose judgment is clouded by his own feelings for the woman.

Parents new to the aristocracy are both displeased and surprised when their elder son, who's never shown much aptitude for or interest in anything, declares that he must become a concert pianist. They agree at last to finance his study of …

A writer discovers that the superior woman he has long admired from afar is the longtime mistress of her own servant.

A man recuperates uncomfortably at the home of an unpleasant man and his pathetic wife, whose startling tale makes her guest all the more eager to recover his strength and get away from the place.