John Rechy: 15 books

The long-awaited memoir by “one of the few original American writers of the last century” 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...

The cult classic novel from “one of the few major American writers whose life is as interesting, and meaningful, as his work” (Michael Cunningham). When John Rechy’s explosive first book appeared in 1963, it marked a radical departure from all other stories of its kind, and gave voice...

A Los Angeles Latina woman living in poverty and hoping for miracles “comes to stunning and heartbreaking life” in this novel from an award-winning author (Newsday). On a hot, still day in May, Amalia Gómez sees—or thinks she sees—a large silver cross in the sky. Does this vision foretell...

John Rechy’s first novel, City of Night, an international bestseller, is considered a modern classic. Subsequent work asserts his place among America’s most important writers. The author’s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing...

A “tour de force” 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 “leather and Western” bar located near the deserted waterfront of a large American city. This is a sexual battlefield—a...

In Bodies and Souls, Rechy paints a portrait of modern Los Angeles, "the most spiritual and physical of cities," where we meet characters like Amber, a porn superstar; Manny Gomez, a Chicano caught up in the punk-rock scene; and Dave Clinton, an aging male stripper. Epic in scope and vision, Bodies and Souls is classic Rechy.

A stunning evocation of gay desire in the moment just before AIDs by the acclaimed author of City of Night: “Taut writing and unapologetic sexual energy” (The Dallas Morning News). It is 1981, a hot summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Jesse, “the kid,” is...

In this angry, eloquent outcry against the oppression of homosexuals, the author of the classic City of Night gives "an explosive non-fiction account, with commentaries, of three days and nights in the sexual underground" of Los Angeles in the 1970s--the "battlefield" of the sexual outlaw. Using the...

A vivid reimagining of the life and legacy of Marilyn Monroe: “A massive, magnetic story by a major American novelist writing at the peak of his powers” (San Francisco Chronicle). When eighteen-year-old Normalyn discovers a letter asserting that Marilyn Monroe was her true mother, she travels...

This is the compelling, ferociously relevant 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.

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,...

Modeled on the classic 18th-century picaresques like Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Defoe’s Moll Flanders, The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens is the modern-day bildungsroman of a prodigiously attractive young Texan named Lyle Clemens. Lyle is kind of a holy fool who, like...

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.

A retelling of the stories of the fallen women of history, recounted by an eighteenth-century lady who realizes that these women's lives bear a remarkable resemblance to her own and is told by a mystic that her dreams are memories of past lives and that she must face the public to vindicate all women falsely accused of crimes.