Now a major motion picture from USA Films starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, and director Philip Haas (director of Angels and Insects). In Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham portrays a wealthy young English woman who finds herself confronted rather brutally by the repercussions of whimsy. On the day her older and prosperous friend asks her to marry him, Mary Leonard demurs and decides to postpone her reply a few days. But driving into the hills above Florence alone that evening, Mary offers a ride to a handsome stranger. And suddenly, her life is utterly, irrevocably altered. For this stranger is a refugee of war, and he harbors more than one form of passion. Before morning, Mary will witness bloodshed, she will be forced to seek advice and assistance from an unsavory man, and she will have to face the truth about her own yearnings. Erotic, haunting, and maddeningly suspenseful, Up at the Villa is a masterful tale of temptation and the capricious nature of fate.

威廉·薩姆塞特·毛姆（1874—1965），英國著名作傢，被譽為“最會講故事的作傢”，整個英語世界最暢銷的作傢之一。毛姆是一位成功的多産作傢，在長篇小說、短篇小說和戲劇領域裏都有建樹。不過毛姆本人對自己的評價卻很謙虛：“我隻不過是二流作傢中排在前麵的一個。” 毛姆最知名、最暢銷的小說《人性的枷鎖》（1915）在其去世前的銷量就已超過瞭一韆萬冊。除長篇外，毛姆還是一個齣色的短篇小說傢，他的短篇小說有一百多部。1946年，毛姆設立瞭薩姆塞特·毛姆奬，奬勵優秀的年輕作傢，鼓勵 並資助他們到各處旅遊。1952年，牛津大學授予毛姆名譽博士學位。1954年，英王室授予他“榮譽侍從”稱號。1965年12月16日毛姆在法國尼斯去逝。