Night Listener

In the 19th century, almost every novelist -- from Dickens to Dostoevsky -- published his fiction serially in newspapers. By the end of the 20th century, Armistead Maupin, whose wildly popular Tales of the City first appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, was one of the few remaining practitioners of the form. In his latest novel, The Night Listener, Maupin draws on his experience of being at the center of this serial phenomenon with a compelling story about a celebrity yarn-spinner who finds himself on the listening end of a tale he wants desperately to believe.