BOOK

Selena Hastings, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (Random House, $35). Actually, not much of the dirt in this tell-all biography of the author of Of Human Bondage (and, needless to say, The Letter) will come as a surprise to those familiar with Ted Morgan’s Maugham, published in 1980. But Hastings is a much better writer who had unrestricted access to previously unknown primary source material, and the result is a smart book that portrays its subject with a welcome combination of candor and sympathy (TT).