When Mona Ramsey married Lord Teddy Roughton to secure his visa --- allowing him to remain in San Francisco to fulfill his wildest dreams --- she never imagined that by age 48, she would be the sole owner of Easley House, Teddy’s grand, romantic country manor in the UK. She also didn't imagine that she’d need to open the manor’s doors to paying guests to afford the electric bill and repair the leaking roof. Yet somehow, she and her young friend, Wilfred --- whom guests assume is serving as Easley’s charming-but-clumsy butler --- and the loopy old gardener, Mr. Hargis, are making it work. This delicate equilibrium is upended when Americans Rhonda and Ernie Blaylock arrive for a weekend vacation at Easley, and Wilfred stumbles onto their terrible secret.

Born in the mid-20th century and raised in the heart of conservative North Carolina, Armistead Maupin lost his virginity to another man "on the very spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired." Realizing that the South was too small for him, this son of a traditional lawyer packed his earthly belongings into his Opel GT and took to the road in search of adventure. It was a journey that would lead him from a homoerotic Navy initiation ceremony in the jungles of Vietnam to that strangest of strange lands: San Francisco in the early 1970s. Reflecting on the profound impact those closest to him have had on his life, Maupin shares his candid search for his "logical family," the people he could call his own.

THE DAYS OF ANNA MADRIGAL, the ninth novel in Armistead Maupin’s classic Tales of the City series, follows one of modern literature’s most beloved and indelible characters --- Anna Madrigal, the transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane --- as she embarks on a road trip that will take her deep into her complicated past.

It’s been 20 years since Mary Ann Singleton left her family in San Francisco to pursue a TV career in New York. But now personal calamities have driven her back home to her oldest friend, forcing her to take stock of her mistakes.