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Mona of the Manor
Mona of the Manor
Oct 18, 2024 1:16 AM

Author:Armistead Maupin

Mona of the Manor

The tenth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga.

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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.

Reviews

The outstanding American crime-writer of his generation

—— Peter Gutteridge, Independent

James Ellroy writes like a man possessed about men possessed

—— David Pascoe, Modern Review

Not since the days of Hammett and Chandler has the crime novel been so eloquent and seductive

—— VOX

Rendell’s eerier capacity to comprehend disturbed criminal minds continues to astonish

—— The Times

Once her characters start twisting on every-tightening tracks, their fates are brilliantly sealed, and it’s never obvouis who’ll be the victim or the culprit. Rendell’s greatest trick is making an unforeseen outcome feel predestined

—— Financial Times

Get ready to be enthralled from the first word, and begging for more by the last. Raven Kennedy crafts an astonishing world that's filled with captivating characters and a story you won't be able to put down

—— Ivy Asher, bestselling author of The Osseous Chronicles and The Lost Sentinel Series

This series is amazing and I can't recommend it enough. It is one of the best New Adult Fantasy books out there.

—— Kay Thatcher, author of Prince of Blades

TEN GILDED STARS! Remarkably original . . .and the prose, people . . . gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous

—— Olivia Wildenstein, USA Today Bestselling Author

An emotional rollercoaster

—— Elizabeth Brown, author of Blood Crown

What I've enjoyed so far about this series is how it's a metaphor about real, emotional issues

—— Day Leitao, author of Kingdom of Curses and Shadows Series

I devoured [the] first book and it ended on such a nice cliff-hanger that I am thirsting for the next one

—— Emmie Hamilton, author of Chosen to Fall

Praise for Elizabeth Noble

—— -

Elizabeth Noble's unerring eye depicts family life in all its forms, good and bad, in a way we will all recognise. I loved this book

—— Katie Fforde

Witty, affectionate and unashamedly tear-jerking

—— Red

A great writer. You'll be rooting for Noble's protagonists as soon as you meet them

—— Daily Mail

An utterly absorbing multi-generational tale - the beautiful relatable writing we've come to expect from Elizabeth Noble, with a touch of summer magic...I adored it

—— Penny Parkes

A moving and warm-hearted novel about love in all its forms...Nobody weaves a complex web of stories with quite the same skill as Elizabeth Noble

—— Sunday Express

Irresistible comfort read

—— Glamour

Honest and beautifully written

—— Woman & Home

Noble is the mistress of the tearjerking message of love

—— Express

A moving and warm-hearted story of friendship and love . . . Elizabeth Noble writes wonderfully real and relatable characters and then puts their lives under the microscope, weaving their stories with tenderness and humanity

—— Yours Magazine

Other People's Husbands is a compelling, honest and uplifting tale which will have you hooked from first page to last

—— Lancashire Evening Post

An artful game of distortion... Clever handling

—— Anthony Quinn , Mail on Sunday

A curious piece of autobiographical fiction

—— David Sexton , Evening Standard

A wisecracking thriller hightailing between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in... This is ultimately a book about writing, wordplay and knowingness

—— Catherine Taylor , Sunday Telegraph

No contemporary novelist is more enthralled by what goes on inside the human skull than Ian McEwan... Sweet Tooth, which juxtaposes contrasting casts of mind, reminds you that, as well as intelligence, the intelligence service fascinates McEwan... Always excellent at conjuring up places and periods on the cusp of dramatic change... McEwan atmospherically resurrects the strife-ridden Britain of 1972 -73... Similarities and contrasts between the mentality and mind games of the secret service and those of the creative writer are increasingly brought to the fore. Doubling back and forth across genre boundaries, Sweet Tooth takes risks: narrative loiterings and twists whose purpose isn’t at first apparent, a payoff that is long delayed. But – ideally read more than once – this acute, witty novel is a winningly cunning addition to McEwan’s fictional surveys of intelligence

—— Peter Kemp , Sunday Time

Must read... Intrigue, love and mutual betrayal by a master of the art

—— The Lady

The great thing about McEwan is that, despite his success, he continues to work hard, producing ever more accessible and entertaining stories

—— Henry Sutton , Daily Mirror

Carefully researched

—— John Scarlett , Daily Telegraph

McEwan, as always, presents an engaging narrator... The plot is fantastic... McEwan plays with the readers expectations, and surpasses them all with a fabulous ending that makes me itch to re-read this superb novel all over again. Sweet Tooth marks another triumph for a brilliant British author

—— Bookgeeks.co.uk

A pleasing, tricksy beast with a subsumed sense of metatextuality likely to be pleasing to his fans

—— Bookmunch

Adroitly done...highly diverting

—— D.J. Taylor , Literary Review

A triumphant shedding of genre limitations

—— Adam Mars-Jones , London Review of Books

This most cunning of authors entertains and manipulates his readers. Sweet Tooth is a masterclass in the art of fiction

—— Paul Sidey , Book Oxygen

Ian McEwan is getting better and better… Supremely tense, intellectually sharp, and honed as hell

—— William Leith , Evening Standard

McEwan’ssmoothly contrived thriller hightails between love and betrayal, with serious counter-espionage credentials thrown in

—— Sunday Telegraph Seven

An expertly crafted thriller written with a bucketload of suspense and wit

—— Hannah Britt , Daily Express

As richly textured as anything Ian McEwan has written

—— Mai

Brilliantly cunning… It’s a story of love, betrayal and duplicity, with the most startling deception reserved for the final pages

—— Mail on Sunday (You)

Playful, clever, knowing and full of stories

—— Absolutely Chelsea

Supremely tense, intellectually sharp, and honed as hell

—— William Leith , Scotsman

Beyond virtuoso twists and turns, McEwan lays out the foreign landscape of 40 years ago – from smoky pubs to fuming punditry – with wry, affectionate panache

—— Boyd Tonkin , i

Tricksy, but satisfying

—— Justin Cartwright , Observer

The sense of narrative purpose exerts its pull from the first

—— John Mullan , Guardian
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