No Such Thing as Duty

In the waning days of World War One, William Somerset Maugham—novelist, playwright, and spy—is sent to Romania to serve allied interests in the fight against Austro-Hungary while dying of tuberculosis. His handler sets him to recruit mysterious Carpathian nobleman Walter Roşu to the cause. But Roşu is more interested in William than the war, and William struggles to fulfill his duty in the face of death and desire. PRAISE “Gritty and decadent and brittle with gallows humor, No Such Thing as Duty has everything I want in a story: clever writing, characters sharp enough to cut yourself, and an ending that makes me double-take, then pick up the book and start reading from the beginning. Set aside an afternoon to devour this in one sitting, and thank me later.” —Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief