Armistead Maupin

The number one international bestseller by the author of Tales of the City'Wonderful, funny, poignant and gutsy’ Mademoiselle‘Scathingly funny, haunting…Maupin enlightens, entertains and empowers his readers’ Atlanta Journal‘Highly funny and deeply poignant…With a heartfelt resonance few male writers ever accomplish' Boston Herald‘Perfectly pitched and heartbreaking. There hasn't been a funnier, or sadder, novel this year’ Entertainment Weekly__________All of thirty-one inches tall, Cadence (Cady) Roth is a true survivor in a town where - as she says - 'you can die of encouragement'. Her early leading role as a lovable elf in a smash-hit American film proved a major disappointment since moviegoers never saw the face behind the rubber mask. After a decade of hollow promises from the Industry, she is still waiting for the miracle that will make her a star. From her infrequent meetings with agents and studio moguls to her regular, harrowing encounters with small children, large dogs and human ignorance, we track our spunky heroine across the saffron-hazed wasteland of Los Angeles. 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 hare-brained and daring that it just might succeed... Maybe the Moon is the poignant and moving tale of an outsider told from the inside which eloquently speaks to the resilience of the human spirit.

'His most mature, mellow and moving novel yet' Independent'A mystery studded with elegant twists and turns' New York Times Book Review'Absorbing, sophisticated, funny and touching' Sunday Times'A tremendous, hugely satisfying read' Time Out________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 the memoir of a thirteen-year-old boy who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his parents. Pete Lomax is not only a brave and gifted diarist but a devoted listener to Noone's show. When Noone phones the boy to offer encouragement, it soon becomes clear that Pete sees in this heart-sick, middle-aged storyteller the loving father he's always wanted. Thus begins an extraordinary friendship that only grows deeper as the boy's health deteriorates. 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 the tightrope between truth and illusion, he is finally forced to confront all his relationships - familial, romantic and erotic.

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.