San Francisco: The Luxury of Eccentricity Books in Order
Part ofWilliam Martin Books in OrderExplore San Francisco: The Luxury of Eccentricity by William Martin, with book order, summaries, series background, and help choosing where to start.
Last updated: July 2, 2026
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San Francisco: The Luxury of Eccentricity books in publication order
1 book
Life in an Ivory Tower
by William Martin
2020
Nineteen-year-old Trevor lands in 1970s San Francisco and starts figuring out who he wants to be. Part coming of age story and part city memoir, it follows a young gay man stepping out from family expectations and the closet.
San Francisco: The Luxury of Eccentricity books in chronological order
Series background & context
San Francisco: The Luxury of Eccentricity is less a tidy plot machine than a sprawling city memoir in novel form. The series follows Trevor Oliver Tadich III as he makes his way through San Francisco, especially the queer neighborhoods and nightlife of the 1970s, while trying to figure out who he is and how he wants to live.
At heart, these books are about self invention. Trevor arrives young, overwhelmed, and not interested in staying boxed in by family expectations or by the closet. San Francisco gives him room to experiment, perform, flirt, fail, and try again. That freedom is exhilarating, but it is not simple. The series keeps one eye on the thrill of reinvention and the other on loneliness, confusion, and the cost of growing up.
The city is not background scenery. It is the co star.
Polk Street and the wider San Francisco queer world matter here in a very direct way. Bars, sidewalks, storefronts, discos, and apartments all help shape the story. The books look back to a period when the city felt like a promised land for many young queer people, a place where new kinds of chosen family and public identity were being built in real time. That sense of discovery gives the series much of its energy.
The storytelling is memory driven and openly semi autobiographical. Scenes often feel like vivid recollections, funny, sharp, a little theatrical, and deeply attached to place. The larger project moves back and forth through time, linking Trevor's life in 1970s San Francisco with earlier family history and with the person he becomes later on. Because of that, the series reads more like an unfolding life story than a neatly compartmentalized genre saga.
You should expect color, voice, and feeling first. There is comedy here, and gossip, and style, but also the harder work of naming yourself honestly. Trevor's search is not just about romance or nightlife. It is about belonging, creativity, memory, and the question of how a person makes a home in a city that is always changing. The books form a coming of age story, a coming out story, and just as much a coming into place story.
If you want San Francisco rendered from the inside, with all its oddness, warmth, and restless self invention, that is exactly what this series is trying to do.
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