Promotional Information

The sixth volume in the acclaimed Tales of the City series.

About the Author

Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C. in 1944 but was brought up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he served as a naval officer in Vietnam before moving to California in 1971 as a reporter for the Associated Press. In 1976 he launched his daily newspaper serial, Tales of the City, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades, Tales grew into an international sensation when compiled and rewritten as novels. Maupin's six-volume Tales of the City sequence - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others and Sure of You - are now multi-million bestsellers published around the world. He is also the author of two other bestselling novels, Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener, which was recently made into a film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. He lives in San Francisco, California.
Official Author Web Site- www.ArmisteadMaupin.com

Reviews

Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead Maupin's novels have all appeared originally as serials...it is the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these novels charming and compelling
*Literary Review*

A consummate entertainer...It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly
*Times Literary Supplement*

San Francisco is fortunate in having a chronicler as witty and likeable as Armistead Maupin
*Independent*

I know I was not the only one who was up until two in the morning, promising myself to stop after just one chapter
*The New York Times Book Review*

Armistead Maupin's acclaim is richly deserved. He uses suspense, mystery and coincidence far more inventively than the more typical novelist
*Guardian*

Maupin is a richly gifted comic author
*Observer*

Maupin's work is like a drug: it's easy, it's fun and it leaves you greedy for more...superb
*The Australian*

Tales of the City , the author's six-novel chronicle of gay, straight, single and married life in San Francisco, comes to a smart, wistful conclusion in this final installment. The series' large cult readership will already be familiar with the cast: the gay couple Thack and Michael, who must now live with the possibility of AIDS; Brian and Mary Ann, whose marriage crumbles under the strain of her growing celebrity; and Mona, who searches for happiness on a visit to Lesbos. Maupin began the stories as a serial in local newspapers, and each novel is as much a product of its moment as a Doonesbury strip. This one is no exception; it's packed with references to everything from Barbara Bush's weight to a specific, infamous segment of Late Night with David Letterman. What makes the books work are Maupin's gifts as both a reporter and an social ironist, and his unerring ability to capture the exact tone of smart urban conversation, whether the topic is politics, sex, friendship or the latest movies. Only Mary Ann, a ferociously ambitious morning-show hostess whose series goes ``lower than Geraldo,'' is a caricature, albeit a wickedly funny one; the rest are full-blooded creations whose departures will be mourned. (Oct.)

Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead Maupin's novels have all appeared originally as serials...it is the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these novels charming and compelling * Literary Review *
A consummate entertainer...It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly * Times Literary Supplement *
San Francisco is fortunate in having a chronicler as witty and likeable as Armistead Maupin * Independent *
I know I was not the only one who was up until two in the morning, promising myself to stop after just one chapter -- David Feinberg * The New York Times Book Review *
Armistead Maupin's acclaim is richly deserved. He uses suspense, mystery and coincidence far more inventively than the more typical novelist -- Jonathan Coe * Guardian *