Cakes and Ale — W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham's 1930 novel: the aging writer William Ashenden is asked to help produce a reverent biography of a recently deceased literary giant — and finds himself recalling the great man's first wife, Rosie, whose warmth, appetite for life, and refusal to be respectable outshines every "great man" in the book. Widely considered Maugham's finest and most personal novel.

Format: ePub (compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers)

Edition: U.S. public domain edition, text courtesy of Standard Ebooks (CC0). This work entered the U.S. public domain in 2026, 95 years after its first publication.