Armistead Maupin

Armistead Maupin is the author of Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn, The Days of Anna Madrigal and Mona of the Manor. He also wrote an acclaimed memoir, Logical Family. 
 
Three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three Tales novels. The Night Listener became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. Maupin lives in London with his husband, Christopher Turner. 
 
 For more information on Armistead Maupin and his books, see his website at www.armisteadmaupin.com

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Originally published as a series of columns in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tales of the City is the landmark series by Armistead Maupin. The novels chronicle the life of Mary Anne Singleton after she impulsively moves to San Fransicso, following her adventures in the city as she is guided by friends and lovers.

The fifth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
&lsquo;Some of the sharpest and most speakable dialogue you are ever likely to read&rsquo; Guardian 
____________________ 
 
Tranquillity reigns in the ancient redwood forest until a women-only music festival sets up camp downriver from an all-male retreat for the ruling class. Among those entangled in the ensuing mayhem are a lovesick nurseryman, a panic-stricken philanderer, and the world&rsquo;s most beautiful fat woman. Significant Others is Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s cunningly observed meditation on marriage, friendship and sexual nostalgia. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1980s San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Significant Others

Tales of the City 5

The third novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
&lsquo;An enormously talented writer&hellip; By writing about what's seemingly different Armistead Maupin always manages to capture what's so hilariously painfully true for all of us&rsquo; Amy Tan 
____________________ 
 
The calamity-prone residents of 28 Barbary Lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While Anna Madrigal imprisons an anchor-woman in her basement, Michael Tolliver looks for love at the National Gay Rodeo, DeDe Halcyon Day and Mary Ann Singleton track a charismatic psychopath across Alaska, and society columnist Prue Giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in a San Francisco park. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1970s San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Further Tales Of The City

Tales of the City 3

The seventh novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
'Tender-hearted and frolicsome&hellip; A tale of long-lost friends and unrealised dreams, of fear and regret, of penance and redemption, and of the unshakeable sense that this world we love, this life we live, this drama on which we all play, does indeed go by much too fast&rsquo; New York Times 
____________________ 
 
Nearly two decades after ending his iconic Tales of the City saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero Michael Tolliver&mdash;the fifty-five-year-old sweet-spirited gardener and survivor of the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers&mdash;for a single day at once mundane and extraordinary... and filled with the everyday miracles of living. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in a sexually-liberated San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Michael Tolliver Lives

Tales of the City 7

The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga, is an uproariously moving novel and an indelible portrait of cultural change from the seventies. 
 
Named as one of the BBC&rsquo;s 100 Most Inspiring Novels, a PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick and Britain&rsquo;s favourite gay/lesbian novel from The Big Gay Read 
____________________ 
 
Originally serialised in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s Tales of the City afforded a mainstream audience of millions its first exposure to straight and gay characters experiencing on equal terms the follies of urban life. 
 
Among the cast of this ground-breaking saga are the lovelorn residents of 28 Barbary Lane: the bewildered but aspiring Mary Ann Singleton, the libidinous Brian Hawkins; Mona Ramsey, still in a sixties trance, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, forever in bright-eyed pursuit of Mr. Right; and their marijuana-growing landlady, the indefatigable Mrs. Madrigal. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads them through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Tales Of The City

The sixth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
‘Maupin's adeptness at fluid dialogue, his flair for shaping characters who thread the needle between pop archetypes and singular human beings… are all on display’ New York Times 
____________________ 
 
A fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco. Caught in the middle is their longtime friend, a gay man whose own future is even more uncertain. Wistful and compassionate yet subversively funny, Sure of You is Armistead Maupin’s addictively entertaining observation on family, friendship and every relationship in between. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1980s San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Sure Of You

Tales of the City 6

The eighth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
'Perhaps the most sublime piece of popular literature America has ever produced&rsquo; Salon 
____________________ 
 
A touching portrait of friendship, family, and fresh starts, the City by the Bay welcomes back Mary Ann Singleton, the beloved Tales of the City heroine who started it all. A new chapter begins in the lives of both Mary Ann and Michael &lsquo;Mouse&rsquo; Tolliver when she returns to San Francisco to rejoin her oldest friend after years in New York City&hellip; the reunion that fans of Maupin&rsquo;s beloved Tales of the City series have been awaiting for years. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in a sexually-liberated San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Mary Ann in Autumn

Tales of the City 8

The fourth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
&lsquo;A consummate entertainer who has made a generation laugh.... It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly&rsquo; Edmund White, Times Literary Supplement 
____________________ 
 
When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there&rsquo;s more to making a baby than meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbour, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first piece of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1970s San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Babycakes

Tales of the City 4

The second novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
&lsquo;Entertains, illuminates&hellip; A cultural touchstone that has enlarged our understanding of the varieties of human behavior&rsquo; Washington Post 
____________________ 
 
The tenants of 28 Barbary Lane have fled their cosy nest for adventures far afield. Mary Ann Singleton finds love at sea with a forgetful stranger, Mona Ramsey discovers her doppelgänger in a desert whorehouse, and Michael Tolliver bumps into his favourite gynaecologist in a Mexican bar. Meanwhile, their venerable landlady takes the biggest journey of all&mdash;without ever leaving home. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1970s San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

More Tales Of The City

Tales of the City 2

The ninth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin&rsquo;s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
'Wonderful. . . . As compulsively readable and endearing as all the previous novels have been&rsquo; Booklist (starred review) 
____________________ 
 
Now ninety-two, Mrs. Madrigal has seemingly found peace with her &lsquo;logical family&rsquo; in San Francisco. Some members of that family are bound for the otherworldly landscape of Burning Man, the art community in Nevada&rsquo;s Black Rock Desert but Anna has another destination in mind: a lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the 16-year-old boy she once was ran away from the whorehouse he called home. There she journeys into the dusty troubled heart of her Depression childhood to unearth a lifetime of secrets and dreams and attend to some unfinished business she has long avoided. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in a sexually-liberated San Francisco. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

The Days of Anna Madrigal

Tales of the City 9

'A breeze' The Times 
‘Delightful comedy of manners' iPaper 
‘A welcome tenth instalment of his iconic Tales Of The City saga’ Mail on Sunday 
‘A witty novel about identity and finding a family in 1980s England’ Woman&Home 
'The message still shines out in the new book: find the people who love and understand you' The Scotsman 
____________________ 
 
The tenth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga. 
 
When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa—allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfil his wildest dreams—she never imagined she would, by age 48, be the sole owner of Easley House, a romantic country manor in the UK. Now, with her adopted son, Wilfred, Mona has opened Easley’s doors to paying guests to keep her inherited English manor afloat. 
 
As they welcome a married American couple to Easley, Mona and Wilfred discover their new guests’ terrible secret. Instead of focussing on the imminent arrival of old friend Michael Tolliver and matriarch Anna Madrigal, Mona will need to use her considerable charm, willpower and wiles to set things right before Easley’s historic Midsummer ceremony. 
 
Hurdling barriers both social and sexual, Maupin leads the eccentric tenants of Barbary Lane through heartbreak and triumph, through nail-biting terrors and gleeful coincidences in 1980s San Francisco and beyond. The result is a glittering and addictive comedy of manners that continues to beguile new generations of readers.

Mona of the Manor

Maybe the Moon, Armistead Maupin's first novel since ending his bestselling Tales of the City series, is the audaciously original chronicle of Cadence Roth -- Hollywood actress, singer, iconoclast and former Guinness Book of Records holder as the world's shortest woman. 
 
All of 31 inches tall, Cady is a true survivor in a town where -- as she says -- 'you can die of encouragement'. Her early starring role as a lovable elf in an immensely popular American film proved a major disappointment, since moviegoers never saw the face behind the stifling rubber suit she was required to wear. Now, after a decade of hollow promises from the Industry, she is reduced to performing at birthday parties and Bar Mitzvahs as she waits for the miracle that will finally make her a star. 
 
In a series of mordantly funny journal entries, Maupin tracks his spunky heroine across the saffron-hazed wasteland of Los Angeles -- from her all-too-infrequent meetings with agents and studio moguls to her regular harrowing encounters with small children, large dogs and human ignorance. Then one day a lanky piano player saunters into Cady's life, unleashing heady new emotions, and she finds herself going for broke, shooting the moon with a scheme so harebrained and daring that it just might succeed. 
 
Her accomplice in the venture is her best friend, Jeff, a gay waiter who sees Cady's struggle for visibility as a natural extension of his own war against the Hollywood Closet. As clear-eyed as it is charming, Maybe the Moon is a modern parable about the mythology of the movies and the toll it exacts from it participants on both sides of the screen. It is a work that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit from a perspective rarely found in literature.

Maybe The Moon

Lydia Wilson and Kate Harper star in these BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of the first and second novels in Armistead Maupin's acclaimed 'Tales of the City' series. 
 
Set against the 1970s San Fransisco skyline, Maupin's Tales of the City introduces the unconventional tenants of 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric, marijuana-growing landlady Anna Madrigal. 
 
Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman newly-arrived from Cleveland, Ohio, moves into an apartment there and soon becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey; the strange Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to his friends as Mouse. Beyond the house, lovers and friends guide Mary Ann through her San Franciscan adventures... 
 
In More Tales of the City, landlady Anna Madrigal reveals her secrets to her tenants, but they are preparing to flee their cosy nest for adventures further afield. 
 
Dramatised by Barbara Lavery, this is both a sparkling comedy of manners and a portrait of a free and easy era. 
 
Cast: 
 
Anna Madrigal..... Kate Harper 
Mary Ann..... Lydia Wilson 
DeDe..... Nancy Crane 
Mona..... Buffy Davis 
Edgar..... Lou Hirsch 
Frannie/Binkie/Mucca..... Bernice Stegers 
Beauchamp..... John Guerrasio 
Michael..... Jos Slovick 
Jon/Brian..... Simon Lee Phillips 
D’Or/Betty..... Valerie Cutko 
Siegel/Hampton-Giddes/Norman/Bruno..... Kerry Shale 
Burke..... Trevor White 
 
Produced and directed by Susan Roberts

Tales of the City: Series 1 and 2

Two BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations

In this funny, poignant and unflinchingly honest memoir, one of the world’s best-loved storytellers explains how he evolved from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to claim their own lives.   It is a journey that leads him from the racism and misogyny of mid-century North Carolina to a homoerotic Navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to an awkward conversation about girls with President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office of the White House.  After losing his virginity to another man 'on the very spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired', Maupin packs his earthly belongings into his Opel GT (including a portrait of a Confederate ancestor) and heads west to that strangest of strange lands:  San Francisco in the early 1970’s.

Logical Family

A Memoir

Gabriel Noone is a writer whose late night radio stories have brought him into the homes of millions. Noone is in the midst of a painful separation from his lover of ten years when a publisher sends him proofs of a remarkable book: the memoir of a sickly thirteen-year-old boy who suffered horrific sexual abuse at the hands of his parents. 
 
Now living with his adoptive mother, Donna, Pete Lomax is not only a brave and gifted diarist but a devoted listener of Noone's show. When Noone phones the boy to offer encouragement, it soon becomes clear that Pete sees in this heartsick, middle-aged storyteller the loving father he's always wanted. Thus begins an extraordinary friendship that grows deeper only as the boy's health deteriorates, freeing Noone to unlock his innermost feelings. 
 
Then, out of the blue, troubling new questions arise, exploding Noone's comfortable assumptions and causing his ordered existence to spin wildly out of control. As he walks a vertiginous line between truth and illusion, he is finally forced to confront all his relationships - familial, romantic and erotic. 
 
As complex and hypnotically engrossing as the best of mysteries, The Night Listener is an astonishing tour de force that moves and challenges Maupin's readers as never before.

The Night Listener

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