Night Listener, The

After an absence of eight years, Armistead Maupin returns with the tale of Gabriel Noone, a writer whose cult-hit radio serial "Noone at Night" has brought him into the homes of millions. Noone is in the midst of a painful separation from his lover of 10 years when a publisher sends him proofs of a remarkable book: the memoir of an ailing 13-year-old boy who suffered horrific sexual abuse at the hands of his parents. Now living with his adoptive mother, Donna, Pete Lomax is not only a brave and gifted diarist but a devoted listener of Noone's show. When Noone phones the boy to offer encouragement, it soon becomes clear that Pete sees in this heartsick 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, freeing Noone to unlock his innermost feelings. Then, out of the blue, troubling new questions arise, exploding Noone's comfortable assumptions and causing his ordered existence to spin wildly out to control. As he walks a line between truth and illusion, he is finally forced to confront all of his relationships - familial, romantic, and erotic. As complex and hypnotically engrossing as the best of mysteries, The Night Listener is an astonishing tour de force that will move and challenge Maupin's readers as never before.