Michael Nava has 8 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Carved in Bone.
Carved in Bone
Summary
Was Bill Ryan's death an accident? Henry Rios has his doubts. The first new Henry Rios novel in 20 years from six-time Lambda Literary award winner Michael Nava is a brilliantly plotted mystery that weaves together the gripping story of two gay men against the backdrop of 1980s San Francisco as the tsunami of AIDS bears down upon the city. Kirkus Review says: "Delivering an unusual subject and structure, this tale offers refreshing emotional depth and a gay narrative seldom seen in thrillers."
©2019 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The City of Palaces
Summary
In the years before the Mexican Revolution, Mexico is ruled by a tiny elite that apes European culture, grows rich from foreign investment, and prizes racial purity. The vast majority of Mexicans, who are native or of mixed native and Spanish blood, are politically powerless and slowly starving to death. Presiding over this corrupt system is Don Porfirio Díaz, the ruthless and inscrutable president of the Republic. Against this backdrop, The City of Palaces opens in a Mexico City jail with the meeting of Miguel Sarmiento and Alicia Gavilán. Miguel is a principled young doctor, only recently returned from Europe but wracked by guilt for a crime he committed as a medical student 10 years earlier. Alicia is the spinster daughter of an aristocratic family. Disfigured by smallpox, she has devoted herself to working with the city’s destitute. This unlikely pair - he a scientist and atheist and she a committed Christian - will marry. Through their eyes and the eyes of their young son, José, listeners follow the collapse of the old order and its bloody aftermath. The City of Palaces is a sweeping novel of interwoven lives: Miguel and Alicia; José, a boy as beautiful and lonely as a child in a fairy tale; the idealistic Francisco Madero, who overthrows Díaz but is nevertheless destroyed by the tyrant’s political system; and Miguel’s cousin Luis, shunned as a “sodomite”. A glittering mosaic of the colonial past and the wealth of the modern age, The City of Palaces is a story of faith and reason, cathedrals and hovels, barefoot street vendors and frock-coated businessmen, grand opera and silent film, presidents and peasants, the living and the dead. This book was originally published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2014.
©2020 Amble Press (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The Burning Plain
Summary
Gay Mexican American lawyer Henry Rios has fought bigotry and prejudice, battled alcoholism, and watched his lover die from AIDS. In The Burning Plain, he's wrongly accused of murder after a male prostitute he spent an evening with is savagely murdered. Rios proves his innocence, but when two more gay men are brutally murdered, he is drawn unwillingly into the hunt for a serial killer and soon finds himself up against an unsympathetic DA, a gay-bashing cop, reluctant witnesses, and a conspiracy among Hollywood's power elite.
©1997 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Rag and Bone
Summary
While recovering from a heart attack, gay Mexican-American attorney Henry Rios comes to the aid of his long-lost niece, the illegitimate daughter of his estranged sister, who has confessed to the murder of her abusive husband, but during his investigation, Rios discovers that things are more complicated than he had thought.
©2001 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The Death of Friends
Summary
Winner of six Lambda Literary awards, the Henry Rios mystery series is iconic and Michael Nava has been hailed by the New York Times as "one of our best" writers. Originally published during the darkest years of the AIDS epidemic in the gay community, The Death of Friends received extraordinary praise both as a mystery and an eloquent work of witness. Publishers Weekly said, "This is a brave, ambitious and highly impressive work." The San Francisco Chronicle described it as "A beautifully executed novel, with a classic whodunit at its core." And People magazine said, "Nava can devise as canny a plot as he can a defense motion. His latest, though, has something special - the scent of memory that lingers as poignantly as a departed lover's cologne."
©1996 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Howtown
Summary
Winner of six Lambda Literary awards, the Henry Rios mystery series is iconic and Michael Nava has been hailed by the New York Times as "one of our best" crime writers. Upon its original publication, the Los Angeles Times said of Howtown and its author: "Nava's mysteries are faithful to the conventions of the genre, but they are set apart by their insight, compassion, and sense of social justice.... Howtown is Nava's bravest and most ambitious novel to date." This 2019 edition from Persigo Press has been revised and an author's note added. Howtown finds Rios back in his hometown of Los Robles, California, defending Paul Windsor, a boyhood acquaintance accusing of murdering a pedophile. Windsor is himself a pedophile, and the police believe the murder was the result of an extortion scheme gone wrong. It's up to Rios to prove otherwise, if he can. To do that, he has to confront the ghosts of his past that still linger in the sleepy river town. Simultaneously, the novel explores Rios' relationship with his HIV-positive lover, Josh Mandel. This is a revised edition with an author's endnote
©1990 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The Hidden Law
Summary
Winner of six Lambda Literary awards, the Henry Rios mystery series is iconic and Michael Nava has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of our best” writers. In The Hidden Law, Rios delves deeply into his Latino identity as he defends a young man charged with assassinating a prominent Los Angeles Latino politician. The San Francisco Chronicle hailed the novel and its author: “A beautifully conceived but gritty novel.... Nava writes the kind of small, clean, powerful novels that build in emotional power almost invisibly, leaving us breathless at the end.”
©1992 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Lay Your Sleeping Head
Summary
A completely revised edition of the first Henry Rios mystery, The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head introduces Michael Nava’s singular protagonist, gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Rios, beset by personal and professional problems, begins a passionate affair with the black sheep heir to a great California fortune who tells Rios an improbable tale of murder and sexual predation in his wealthy family. When the young man is found dead of an apparent drug overdose, Rios begins an investigation that ultimately reveals much more than that his lover’s death was murder. One reviewer said Lay Your Sleeping Head “retains all the complexity and elegance of the original novel but deepens the themes of personal alienation and erotic obsession that both honored the traditions of the American crime novel and turned them on their head.”
©2016 Michael Nava (P)2020 Audible, Inc.