<div>A Los Angeles Latina woman living in poverty and hoping for miracles &ldquo;comes to stunning and heartbreaking life&rdquo; in this novel from an award-winning author (Newsday). On a hot, still day in May, Amalia G&oacute;mez sees&mdash;or thinks she sees&mdash;a large silver cross in the sky. Does this vision foretell a miracle? The pragmatic, twice-divorced Amalia is doubtful . . . Amalia&rsquo;s neighborhood&mdash;a decaying area near a shabby part of Hollywood Boulevard&mdash;is under attack from gang wars and the police. Her live-in boyfriend is behaving suspiciously, her &ldquo;fast&rdquo; teenage daughter Gloria has become too much to handle, and her teenage son is hinting he&rsquo;s in serious trouble. Most of all, Amalia is haunted by thoughts of her past and her first-born, dead in jail under mysterious circumstances. As the epiphanies and small omens of Amalia&rsquo;s day build to a climax as wondrous as it is shattering, PEN Center USA&rsquo;s Lifetime Achievement Award&ndash;winning author John Rechy takes us into the complicated life of a Chicano family living in Los Angeles&mdash;in all its spirited, gritty reality, giving us &ldquo;a novel with more truth in it than a carload of best-sellers&rdquo; (The Washington Post). &ldquo;A fierce book . . . [told in] tough, uninhibited prose.&rdquo; &mdash;Hartford Courant &ldquo;A vivid and touching novel . . . Rough, heartbreaking . . . Rechy is masterful.&rdquo; &mdash;San Antonio Express-News &ldquo;A triumph, a sad, beautiful and loving book rooted in cultural experience as well as deep intuition.&rdquo; &mdash;Newsday &ldquo;[An] ardently feminist piece of writing. By portraying her abusive past, the poverty and the narrow choices facing Amalia G[&oacute;]mez, Rechy illuminates the plight of certain minority women who remain locked in the dark ages of female emancipation, shut off from any help . . . Amalia G[&oacute;]mez may be the main character, but poverty and ignorance, injustice and fear, are the real subjects of this engaging novel.&rdquo; &mdash;Los Angeles Times</div>

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The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez

<div>The cult classic novel from &ldquo;one of the few major American writers whose life is as interesting, and meaningful, as his work&rdquo; (Michael Cunningham). When John Rechy&rsquo;s explosive first book appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure from all other stories of its kind, and gave voice to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Jean Genet and Jack Kerouac, even as Rechy&mdash;who had based the novel on his own life&mdash;was personally attacked by scandalized reviewers. Nevertheless, City of Night became an international bestseller and ushered in a new era of fiction. More than fifty years later, it remains a classic. Bold and inventive in style, Rechy is unflinching in his portrayal of one anonymous &ldquo;youngman&rdquo; and his search for self-knowledge and love within a furtive, neon-lit world of male hustlers, drag queens, closeted cops, and fetishists. As the narrator moves from El Paso to Times Square, from Pershing Square to the French Quarter, and through the lives of an extraordinary collection of characters who dwell in this clandestine world, Rechy delivers a portrait of the edges of America that has lost none of its power to move and exhilarate. &ldquo;Rechy&rsquo;s tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.&rdquo; &mdash;James Baldwin</div>

City of Night

<div>A stunning evocation of gay desire in the moment just before AIDs by the acclaimed author of City of Night: &ldquo;Taut writing and unapologetic sexual energy&rdquo; (The Dallas Morning News). It is 1981, a hot summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Jesse, &ldquo;the kid,&rdquo; is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself in its transient pleasures. Clint has fled New York with a sense of unease in the wake of a vicious gay-bashing. Buzz, Boo, Toro, Fredo, and Linda are cruising the city looking for danger, and so is Dave, a &ldquo;leatherman&rdquo; devoted to S&amp;M and testing limits. And a priest is searching the streets for a young hustler named Angel, determined to bring him to Jesus. In this city of night we meet a black cowboy, a bodybuilder obsessed with his sexual prowess, a drag-queen porn director hired to rehearse her stars for a closeted Hollywood mogul, and a middle-aged romantic hiding from a new gay world increasingly obsessed with youth and beauty. As the Santa Ana winds, renowned for stirring up desires and violence, breathe fire down the hills of Los Angeles, this cast of characters circles ever closer to the night&mdash;and to a confrontation as astonishing as it is inevitable. The Coming of the Night is an ode to the golden age of promiscuity and an unflinching exploration of the dark side of desire. &ldquo;As exciting as it is chilling,&rdquo; it proves once again that John Rechy, the trenchant chronicler of gay life, has no parallel (Los Angeles Times).</div>

The Coming of the Night

<div>A vivid reimagining of the life and legacy of Marilyn Monroe: &ldquo;A massive, magnetic story by a major American novelist writing at the peak of his powers&rdquo; (San Francisco Chronicle). When eighteen-year-old Normalyn discovers a letter asserting that Marilyn Monroe was her true mother, she travels from Texas to Los Angeles to uncover the truth . . . and ventures deep into a maze of untold Hollywood history. Through the memories of others, Normalyn recreates Marilyn&rsquo;s secret life. She encounters David Lange, a prize-winning writer obsessed with the actress&rsquo;s legend; Mildred Meadows, who once ruled Hollywood&mdash;and Washington&mdash;with her gossip column; the fabulous nightclub entertainer Troja; Dr. and Mrs. Crouch, once hired by the movie studios to tell any lie and conceal any truth, no matter what the cost in destroyed lives; and Miss Bertha, a gentle old recluse, who may have been the confident of great stars. This startling modern epic by the author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw brings to life the beautiful, tragic figure of Marilyn Monroe and two other historical figures crucial to Normalyn&rsquo;s quest: John and Robert Kennedy. A unique literary creation that explores the origins of legends and their power over truth, this novel introduces in Normalyn Morgan, one of the most memorable heroines in modern American fiction.</div>

Marilyn's Daughter

<div>A &ldquo;tour de force&rdquo; novel from the groundbreaking author of City of Night and one of the premier chroniclers of gay life in America (Los Angeles Times). John Rechy takes us inside a &ldquo;leather and Western&rdquo; bar located near the deserted waterfront of a large American city. This is a sexual battlefield&mdash;a world of trucks, piers, and warehouses&mdash;depicted in Rechy&rsquo;s &ldquo;eloquent, convincing, basically unsparing&rdquo; prose (Herbert Gold). The bar regulars are on a ceaseless search for compatible love. The occasional customer hopes for a quick sexual fix. Female and transvestite hookers work the dark streets outside. A couple seeks a voyeuristic experience. And one young man ventures out for the first time. During the course of a single evening we get to know them all and watch as the night descends into the depths of a sexual underworld where danger and play transform into quasi-religious rites that end in ritual sacrifice.</div>

Rushes

<div>An aging male hustler wages an obsessive battle against the passing of his youth in this darkly compelling follow-up to the cult hit City of Night. Johnny Rio, a handsome narcissist no longer a pretty boy, travels to Los Angeles, the site of past sexual conquest and remembered youthful radiance, in a frenzied attempt to recreate his younger self. Like a retired boxer&mdash;an undefeated champion&mdash;who refuses to accept the possible ravages of time, Johnny is led by some unfathomable force to return to combat once again. Combat, for him, takes place in the dark balconies and dismal bathrooms of LA&rsquo;s all-night movie theaters and on the hot sands of the city&rsquo;s gay beaches. But these are only warm up bouts. The real test, Johnny soon learns, will be in the shaded glens of a rambling park on the outskirts of the city. Through those alcoves, as a gallery of sexhunters emerges, he sets out to discover whether the passage of time&mdash;as terrifying to the male hustler as to the dancer or ingenue&mdash;has diminished the allure that was the source of his pride. For Johnny, the final proof resides in numbers. So he sets himself a rigorous time-table&mdash;ten days&mdash;and goal: thirty &ldquo;numbers&rdquo; to prove is mettle. But through all the sexual episodes, the self-indulgence which comprises Johnny&rsquo;s tawdry world, there resounds the universal cry of a human being&rsquo;s desperate need to be loved.</div>

Numbers

<div>The long-awaited memoir by &ldquo;one of the few original American writers of the last century&rdquo; is a testament to the power of self-acceptance (Gore Vidal). John Rechy, author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw, has always known discrimination. Raised Mexican-American in El Paso, Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely segregated, Rechy was often assumed to be Anglo because of his light skin, and had his name &ldquo;changed&rdquo; for him by a teacher, from Juan to John. As he grew older&mdash;and as his fascination with the memory of a notorious kept woman in his childhood deepened&mdash;Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage, but in his sexuality. While he performed the roles expected of him by others&mdash;the authoritarians in the US Army during the Korean War, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not&mdash;he never allowed them to define him. The &ldquo;riveting&rdquo; story of a life that bears witness to some of the most riotous changes of the past century, About My Life and the Kept Woman is as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path (The Advocate). &ldquo;Rechy might be called the first bard of West Hollywood.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;A skillfully paced story . . . As a memoirist, Rechy is both participant and observer, and he segues as easily between narrative and exegesis as his younger self did between the lure of the wild streets and the embrace of his traditional family.&rdquo; &mdash;Los Angeles Magazine</div>

About My Life and the Kept Woman

<div>The award-winning, New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of City of Night delivers a novel of manipulation, sexuality, and the supernatural. On a beautiful private island somewhere in the Caribbean, the rituals of witchcraft and Satanism suddenly take over the lives of a group of people, exposing and shaping their destinies. Richard, a millionaire who is the epitome of male beauty, is the host to a gathering of carefully selected friends for the purpose of a bizarre confrontation&mdash;unknown to them. These odd guests arrive from all corners of the globe by helicopter and speedboat and discover that they are strangely bound together by hate or love or an evil fascination. In the guise of a search for truth, the invited guests are by turns victims and victimizers during a ritual ceremony of evil. Utilizing the techniques of film&mdash;close-ups, long-shots, and sudden shifts of scene, garish flashes of colors&mdash;John Rechy blends the supernatural ingredients, violent sexuality, and depraved rites with the lush beauty of a sea island to create a world whose superficial beauty conceals dark and violent forces close beneath its surface. Praise for John Rechy &ldquo;Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist.&rdquo; &mdash;Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright &ldquo;His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.&rdquo; &mdash;James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist &ldquo;His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration . . . John Rechy doesn&rsquo;t fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong.&rdquo; &mdash;Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America</div>

The Vampires

<div>From the award-winning writer, &ldquo;a passionate manifesto for gay rights by an author who openly and unapologetically identifies himself as a participant&rdquo; (People). In this angry, eloquent outcry against the oppression of homosexuals, the author of the classic City of Night gives &ldquo;an explosive non-fiction account, with commentaries, of three days and nights in the sexual underground&rdquo; of Los Angeles in the 1970s&mdash;the &ldquo;battlefield&rdquo; of the sexual outlaw. Using the language and techniques of film, Rechy deftly intercuts the despairing, joyful, and defiant confessions of a male hustler with the &ldquo;chorus&rdquo; of his own subversive reflections on sexual identity and sexual politics, and with stark documentary, reports of the violence our society directs against homosexuals&mdash;&ldquo;the only minority against whose existence there are laws.&rdquo; &ldquo;An intelligent, persuasive and, in its way, heartbreaking manifesto.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;A jolting book . . . An intense, personal, and courageous document. A book written out of rage, unnerving, thought provoking.&rdquo; &mdash;Los Angeles Times Praise for John Rechy &ldquo;Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist.&rdquo; &mdash;Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright &ldquo;His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.&rdquo; &mdash;James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist &ldquo;His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration . . . John Rechy doesn&rsquo;t fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong.&rdquo; &mdash;Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America</div>

The Sexual Outlaw

<div>&ldquo;A memorable feast . . . powerful, chilling, moving . . . extraordinary&rdquo; from the bestselling author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw (Los Angeles Times). An exceptional novel from the bestselling author of the modern classic City of Night, Bodies and Souls is a portrait of modern Los Angeles on an epic scale, &ldquo;the most spiritual and physical of cities.&rdquo; Gorgeous, seedy, and striving, the Los Angeles of Rechy&rsquo;s imagination is a magnetic city that draws to it the nation&rsquo;s brightest and darkest energies&mdash;characters that include a female porn superstar; a young Chicano punk-rock fan; a Bel Air matron and her tyrannical husband, a Supreme Court judge; an aging male stripper; a black maid with apocalyptic visions; and a cynical TV anchorwoman. Through this rich tapestry of human struggle, Rechy paints a lush portrait of a paradise lost but also a heroic odyssey in search of redemption. &ldquo;Masterful . . . one of the most important novels of the year.&rdquo; &mdash;Dallas Times Herald &ldquo;There&rsquo;s so much energy, ambition, and humor in Bodies and Souls that the phrase &lsquo;scarred beauty&rsquo; might well describe the novel.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review &ldquo;Brilliant portraits of modern lives . . . superb.&rdquo; &mdash;San Francisco Chronicle &ldquo;Rechy is very good at evoking the seamier side of the streets, and he is masterful in funny, graphic sex scenes.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Bodies and Souls

<div>From the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of City of Night: a &ldquo;powerful work that may very well be Rechy&rsquo;s best&rdquo; (Kirkus Reviews). Compelling and ferociously relevant, The Fourth Angel is the story of four teenagers playing deadly games with drugs, sex, and one another. Behind a facade of tough cynicism, on a raging search for kicks, they explore the hot, dusty city, bent on trouble. There are three &ldquo;angels&rdquo;&mdash;Shell, Cob, and Manny&mdash;and their recruit Jerry, who becomes the fourth. Hovering in that uncertain limbo between childhood and adulthood, the four angels maintain a precarious balance among themselves and with the outside world. Each one is today&rsquo;s street kid: still tinged with innocence and capable of beauty, but at the same time, full of rage and violence, attempting to conceal an ugly past. Praise for John Rechy &ldquo;Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist.&rdquo; &mdash;Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright &ldquo;His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.&rdquo; &mdash;James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist &ldquo;Fresh, beautiful, totally courageous and totally cool, passionate . . . His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration . . . John Rechy doesn&rsquo;t fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong.&rdquo; &mdash;Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America</div>

The Fourth Angel

<div>&ldquo;A funny, sexy, far-fetched coming-of-age story&rdquo; from the award-winning, New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of City of Night (The Washington Post). John Rechy&mdash;described by Gore Vidal as &ldquo;one of the few original writers of the last century&rdquo;&mdash;delivers a riotous bildungsroman that pays homage to the classic eighteenth-century picaresque. Loosely inspired by Fielding&rsquo;s Tom Jones, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens follows the journey of handsome Lyle Clemens as he travels through the religious fundamentalist world of Texas to the gambling palaces of Las Vegas and the enticing traps of Los Angeles&rsquo;s mythologies. As Lyle approaches adulthood, everyone wants him to be something he&rsquo;s not. His beautiful mother wants to make him into a reflection of the cowboy who abandoned her; a group of avaricious fundamentalists plot to convert him into &ldquo;the Lord&rsquo;s Cowboy&rdquo; to rouse their televangelical empire to new frenzied heights; and the lovely Maria wants him to fulfill her varying fantasies of &ldquo;true love.&rdquo; When Lyle leaves home to make his own destiny, he encounters a gallery of charlatans and wistful souls, quirky gamblers, aging starlets, and wily pornographers. The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is &ldquo;a potent compound of both sex and rapture . . . sly, smart, sexy and laugh-out-loud funny, but it is also tinged with sorrow and ultimately elevated into the realm of magic&rdquo; (The Los Angeles Times Book Review). &ldquo;Ambitious and very funny . . . a tall tale, a simultaneously sweet and vicious satire of contemporary America . . . a comic tour de force and, at the same time, a truly heartfelt book.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly (starred review)</div>

The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

<div>&ldquo;A funny, sexy, stylistically elegant, tongue-in-cheek rewriting of history&rdquo; from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of City of Night (Booklist). A retelling of the stories of the fallen women of history, recounted by an eighteenth-century lady who realizes that these women&rsquo;s lives bear a remarkable resemblance to her own. Told by a mystic that her dreams are memories of past lives, she must face the public to vindicate all women falsely accused of crimes. &ldquo;Mr. Rechy&rsquo;s renditions of these seemingly familiar stories can . . . be surprisingly fresh, creating an ominous sense of tragedy and doom.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review &ldquo;With a colorful ribbon of feminist revisionism festooning its New Age wrapping, Rechy&rsquo;s latest novel indulges in past-life grandiosity and some scandalous speculation about the erotic lives of Adam, Medea and Jesus, among others.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly &ldquo;Subversive and quite funny . . . A fictional absolution of women known historically as &lsquo;whores&rsquo; . . . framed by a deadly serious look at erotic history and a formidable exploration of the power of words and their interpretation to alter our existence.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist &ldquo;Rechy writes gracefully, and sometimes poignantly, of the fate of fallen women over the centuries.&rdquo; &mdash;The Washington Post</div>

Our Lady of Babylon

<div>A novel on the legality of love from the author of City of Night, &ldquo;one of the few original American writers of the last century&rdquo; (Gore Vidal, public intellectual and author of I Told You So). A man confronts the twin nightmares of death and silent injustice in John Rechy&rsquo;s third novel. While juggling the care of his ailing mother, a young law student stands trial in Los Angeles on a charge that exposes him to the depths and intricacies of society&rsquo;s twisted conceptions of justice and privacy. In This Day&rsquo;s Death, &ldquo;[Rechy] deals with experience from the inside, and it&rsquo;s possible he offers us more unevaluated and uncodified homosexual feeling than any writer in the United States today&rdquo; (The New York Times). Praise for John Rechy &ldquo;Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist.&rdquo; &mdash;Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright &ldquo;His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement.&rdquo; &mdash;James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist &ldquo;His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration . . . John Rechy doesn&rsquo;t fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong.&rdquo; &mdash;Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America</div>

This Day's Death

<div>The &ldquo;shocking, erotic, and suspenseful&rdquo; winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction from the author of City of Night (Out Magazine). John Rechy&rsquo;s first novel, City of Night, an international bestseller, is considered a modern classic. Subsequent work asserts his place among America&rsquo;s most important writers. The author&rsquo;s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, John accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul&rsquo;s library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening&rsquo;s &ldquo;blue hour,&rdquo; John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador&rsquo;s daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son&rsquo;s mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic &ldquo;dangerous games.&rdquo; With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination in the group. As &ldquo;games&rdquo; veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable. &ldquo;A beach read for those who prefer to thumb Genet rather than Grisham on the deckside chaise.&rdquo; &mdash;Los Angeles Review of Books &ldquo;Mysterious, intriguing, and brashly amatory, Rechy&rsquo;s take on gamesmanship, power, domination, and deception is a welcome return to form for the author and a wild ride indeed.&rdquo; &mdash;The Bay Area Reporter &ldquo;Steamy . . . with a kind of Gatsby-by-way-of-Henry James subplot. Beautifully written.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews</div>

John Rechy
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Books By John Rechy (15 Books)