num_pages: 128
description: 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.
language: English
title: Up at the Villa
titlecomplete: Up at the Villa
characters: Rowley Flint, Mary Panton, Sir Edgar Swift, Princess San Ferdinando, Karl Richter
genres: 20th Century, Novella, Novels, Literature, Classic Literature, Italy, Classics, British Literature, Romance, Fiction
ratings_count: 6475
publisher: Vintage Classics