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‘Tales of the City’ taught me the importance of finding your chosen family when you’re LGBTQ

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9 brilliant pieces of gender bending fiction

Tales of the City 8

Mary Ann in Autumn

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.

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

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.

Tales of the City 6

Sure Of You

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.

Tales of the City 7

Michael Tolliver Lives

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.

Tales Of The City

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 5

Significant Others

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.

Tales of the City 2

More Tales Of The City

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.

Tales of the City 3

Further Tales Of The City

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.

Tales of the City 4

Babycakes

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.

Tales of the City 9

The Days of Anna Madrigal

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.

A Memoir

Logical Family

Long awaited and worth that wait - Armistead Maupin finally tells us his story

Master storyteller Armistead Maupin — the man who defined the difference between ‘a biological family’ and ‘a logical family,’ who is both gifted with fearless art and the ability to speak for millions — finally tells his own story. Logical Family is a sweet, filthy peach of a memoir from a cultural explosion of a man

Should be read by anyone who has ever loved and lost . . . Maupin still has the knack of being able to make you laugh and cry on the same page

I read Logical Family as slowly as I could, quite as I could never have read any of the Tales volumes all those years ago. The pleasure of its chapters, each a short story focussing on another member of Armistead's extended tribe, was such a heartwarming delight, I couldn't bear to have it pass me by. It was like having the great man visit and sit smoking and gossiping from an armchair at the foot of the bed.

[A] highly readable memoir.. .moving and with prize moments.

An enormously talented writer—witty but always sympathetic, generous in showing us the secrets of his heart.... By writing about what’s seemingly different Armistead Maupin always manages to capture what’s so hilariously painfully true for all of us.

Full of admissions . . . stuffed full of delicious anecdotes . . . Logical Family will be nectar for the geekier element of Tales devotees, as it reveals for the first time the provenance of many of the characters and storylines.

Logical Family is everything I hoped it would be... funny, filthy and profound.

You can never get enough of Armistead Maupin. Logical Family has been long awaited.

A series of snapshots into a complex life filled with longing, lust, loss and, ultimately, joy

Delightful, humorous, explicit in places, deeply sad – and deliciously gossipy.  In short, he’s a hero: and this is a total treat

It is easy to understand Maupin’s reputation for geniality, given his openheartedness as a person and his honesty as a writer; and that will make this delightful chronicle attractive to a wide range of readers, whether they’re familiar with his fiction or not.

I fell in love with Maupin’s effervescent Tales of the City decades ago, and his genius turn at memoir is no less compelling. Logical Family is a must read.

Logical Family is a beautiful memoir — so tender and funny and dignified and kind that it left me a little weepy

There could be no more appropriate title for Maupin’s own tale, which relates his coming of age from a rigidly conservative Southern childhood to one of the most notable writers of the 20th century. Maupin writes vibrantly…. With just the right amounts of humor, thoughtfulness, and poignancy.”

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

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.

The Night Listener

The new novel by the author of The Tales of the City sequence.

'Absorbing, sophisticated, funny and touching'

'Elegantly conceived and executed, The Night Listener marks a long overdue return to fiction by one of America's best-loved writers...a real page-turner'

'His most mature, mellow and moving novel yet'

'A mystery studded with elegant twists and turns'

'A complex meditation on the frailty of fact and perspective'

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 in eleven languages. The first three of these novels were adapted into widely acclaimed television mini-series. Maupin's 1992 novel, Maybe the Moon, chronicling the adventures of the world's shortest woman, was a number one bestseller. The Night Listener was made into a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette in 2006. 
 
Armistead Maupin lives in San Francisco, California. For more information about Armistead Maupin and his work, please visit his official author website at: www.armisteadmaupin.com

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.

Maybe The Moon

The Number One international bestseller by the author of Tales of the City

'An enormously talented writer- witty but always sympathetic, generous in showing us the secrets of the heart'

'People buy his books the way they buy a line of gourmet soups or designer coffee, for the literary equivalent of a fix, with a trademark guarantee of style, effortless charm and frisky humour'

'A consummate entertainer... Maupin has created a funny, memorable character in Cadence Roth'

'Maybe the Moon will disappoint only the envious. Rich, moving, sexy and funny, it also has a pleasingly angry streak'

'Delights, amuses, moves and angers you with the lightest of touches. It is, as might be said of Cadence herself, a small masterpiece'

'Wonderful, funny, poignant and gutsy...you can feel the author's huge and hurt and loving heart beat on every page'

'An intensely enjoyable novel about friendship and prejudice: the dialogue is word perfect, the psycology laser fine, and there are some terrific jokes... but no synopsis can do justice to this glorious book'

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 in eleven languages. The first three of these novels were adapted into widely acclaimed television mini-series. Maupin's 1992 novel, Maybe the Moon, chronicling the adventures of the world's shortest woman, was a number one bestseller. His novel The Night Listener was made into a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette in 2006. 
 
Armistead Maupin lives in San Francisco, California. For more information about Armistead Maupin and his work, please visit his official author website at: www.armisteadmaupin.com

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.

Armistead Maupin

'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.

Armistead Maupin

Books by Armistead Maupin

Series by Armistead Maupin

Tales of the City

Articles featuring Armistead Maupin

The Penguin books that redefined love and relationships

Books to read to learn more about the AIDS crisis

What to read after watching It’s A Sin

‘Tales of the City’ taught me the importance of finding your chosen family when you’re LGBTQ

9 brilliant pieces of gender bending fiction

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