John Rechy

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 to a subculture that had never before been revealed with such acuity. It earned comparisons to Jean Genet and Jack Kerouac,...

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 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...

John Rechy-described by Gore Vidal as "one of the few original writers of the last century"-delivers a riotous bildungsroman that pays homage to the classic eighteenth-century picaresque. Loosely inspired by Fielding'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's...

John Rechy's new novel is a return to the themes and scenes of his classic, best-selling City of Night and a bittersweet memorial to a lost world - gay Los Angeles in the moment before AIDS. It is 1981, a summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Young, beautiful Jesse is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself completely in its transient pleasures. He is joined by Dave, a leatherman bent on testing...

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 "angels"-Shell, Cob, and Manny-and their recruit Jerry, who becomes the fourth. Hovering in that uncertain limbo between childhood and adulthood, the four angels maintain a precarious...

A man confronts the twin nightmares of death and silent injustice in John Rechy'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's twisted conceptions of justice and privacy.

The award-winning, New York Times—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...

In a jungle village an old man sees a strange girl who has collapsed in a field. Once a holy man, he is sure she is not an evil spirit. He carries her inside and puts her in a hammock, despite his wife's warning that the girl is the evil Xtabay, pretending to be lost and exhausted. The girl has fled her home in search of a mysterious boy who wandered into her village. She senses in him her own despair and loneliness: "I loved him with the intensity...