Laughing Matters is the second installment of Mark Abramson's funny, poignant, sexy, entertaining, and sometimes sobering journal from the Covid years of the early 2020s. You'll laugh and cry along with him as he recollects his life over the 40 some years he has lived in San Francisco's gay Castro neighborhood.

The first book in an exciting mystery series!San Francisco has never been more romantic or adventuresome as portrayed by this popular novelist. A bit of magic and a lot of local lore makes for an exciting and fun read.Gay tourists are arriving in San Francisco by the planeload for the party of the decade at the Moscone Center, a tribute to a late disco star. On the same night as the dance festival, a infamous evangelist plans to bring his nationwide crusade against gay righ...

Mark Abramson was a bartender on Castro Street, Haight Street, and South of Market during the worst years of the AIDS crisis, roughly from 1984 to 1996 when new life-saving drugs came on the market. He was also involved in several of the major fundraising events of the times, from gay bars to the waterfront piers of San Francisco and theaters in between. For My Brothers is filled with true stories of encounters with Connie Francis, Johnnie Ray, and Christine Jorgensen, plus friendships wit...

In this sequel to "Sex, Drugs & Disco," Mark Abramson's diaries begin on January 1, 1980 with optimism for the new decade. San Francisco was a beacon of freedom for gay men from around the world, and he was there to write down the details of most of his tricks, love affairs, and all the fleeting encounters in between. Like the denizens of pre-war Berlin, we were scarcely aware of how special were the times we lived in, nor that our hedonistic joy in the celebration of gay liberation would ...

"Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows," wrote the Roman poet Sextus Propertius two thousand years ago. Tim Snow is faced with temptation and mystery in the latest volume of Mark Abramson's Beach Reading series when his boyfriend goes traveling. But is it absence he's feeling or hormones?The entire cast of quirky characters is back for Book Seven. Artie's performing career has him traveling more. Aunt Ruth tries to wean herself from San Francisco into married life i...

In the fourth release in the Beach Reading series of mysteries by San Francisco Chronicle's best-selling author Mark Abramson, all not is well in the City by the Bay. Tim Snow, recently recovered from a debilitating accident, finds himself aimless and troubled over waning feelings for his boyfriend. And just when he wants to escape all the troubles in his life, new complications arise... three M's worth of trouble: mayhem (a visit from his bigoted and big-haired cousin from Texas), men (a ...

Mark Abramson writes: "I suspect that we might not always recognize when we're living in an historic time. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown provided ample opportunity to contemplate my surroundings and life in America in 2020. I have often kept a journal for many years, so when the coronavirus forced us to quarantine at home, I used the method I know best to try to make sense of the situation by starting a new diary."Join Mark and his diary for Sex! Gossip! YouTube! Gay history! ...

In the 1970s, thousands of young gay men flocked to San Francisco. Mark Abramson, author of the best-selling "Beach Reading" mystery series and the AIDS memoir "For My Brothers," was one of them. In a time and place where sex was free, drugs were cheap, and the driving disco beat felt like it would go on forever, he landed in the great gay Mecca fresh out of college, reconnected with his old friend, the writer John Preston and soon encountered such interesting people as Harvey Milk, Sylves...

In this prequel to MINNESOTA BOY, his "coming out" memoir of his college years, Mark Abramson reaches further back to write about growing up gay in rural America. Stories of farm life through blazing hot summers and icy winters are interspersed with old recipes and commentary on Minnesota foods. He explores his love of music and cooking as well as his earliest awakenings of his interest in other farm boys and yes, he really did raise a pet fox.

Tim Snow is recruited along with other HIV patients for an experiment with Neutriva, an AIDS drug with the peculiar side effect of enhancing dreams and expanding latent psychic abilities. The team enters a trance-like state ostensibly in order to predict and prevent suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. But is something sinister going on with these trials? Warnings come from all directions, including from an elderly fortune teller named Malvina who has been plying her trade from a storefro...

When San Francisco's cattiest television personality Rosa Rivera sponsors a gay wedding contest, Tim Snow's boyfriend begins pressuring him to get hitched. Life for his friends in the Castro becomes comic and chaotic as the lavish ceremony is promised to be held at the restaurant where Tim works. Meanwhile, his beloved Aunt Ruth has been harboring a homeless woman. Is she protecting her nephew from some family secret? As the city's golden boys walk about shirtless in dapper collar n' cuffs...

Mark Abramson, a Minnesota farm boy, moved to San Francisco from Minneapolis in 1975 and dived right into the debauchery of gay life in that pre-AIDS world, including many day trips and overnight stays at the Russian River, ninety miles north of the city. In 1981 he decided to join a group of friends in fixing up an old house south of Guerneville, California. He soon found a job at the legendary Hexagon House/Woods Resort, where he got to meet a plethora of boyfriends, tricks, and celebrit...