Mona of the Manor

Armistead Maupin

From Shelf: Jessie Thompson picks her unmissable 2024 fiction.

'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.