Goodbye Barbary Lane

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City novels-the final three of which are collected in this third omnibus volume-stand as an incomparable blend of great storytelling and incisive social commentary on American culture from the seventies through the first two decades of the new millennium. "These final days of his San Francisco friends and lovers, gay and straight, are seriously moving ... 'aupin deftly illustrates how far America and the pioneering Anna have come, and nearly forty years into the series, his writing remains wildly addictive but is deeper and richer."--People The last three novels of Armistead Maupin's bestselling, critically-acclaimed Tales of the City are now available for the first time as an omnibus edition. The epic series, published between 1978 and 2014, spans the decade before the AIDS crisis through the era of marriage equality following an unforgettable set of characters, whose diverse sexual identities helped set the social stage for the ongoing sexual revolution. Goodbye Barbary Lane-comprised of Michael Tolliver Lives (2007), Mary Ann in Autumn (2010), and The Days of Anna Madrigal (2014)-brings closure to the lives and legacies of the characters through which generations have found connection to America's larger cultural struggles over the past four decades. Joining two companion omnibus volumes, 28 Barbary Lane and Back to Barbary Lane, Goodbye Barbary Lane presents all of "Mr. Maupin's adeptness at fluid dialogue, his flair for shaping characters who thread the needle between pop archetypes and singular human beings, and his great gift for intricate if occasionally preposterous plotting"(New York Times).

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of LGBTQ+, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.