BooksChatter: ☀☄ Carved in Bone: Henry Rios Mysteries [8]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Carved in Bone, a Legal Mystery by Michael Nava (1 April 2019, Persigo Press, 226 pages).

This is the eight book in the Henry Rios Mysteries series.

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.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis, trailer and the Kindle Cloud Reader Preview below, as well as full details of the series.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), and reviews (✍).

|| Synopsis || Trailer || Teaser: KCR Preview || The Series || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

Synopsis

November, 1984.

Criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios, fresh out of rehab and picking up the pieces of his life, reluctantly accepts work as an insurance claims investigator and is immediately is assigned to investigate the apparently accidental death of Bill Ryan.

Ryan, part of the great gay migration into San Francisco in the 1970s, has died in his flat of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty gas line, his young lover barely surviving. Rios’s investigation into Ryan’s death – which Rios becomes convinced was no accident – tracks Ryan’s life from his arrival in San Francisco as a terrified 18-year-old to his transformation into a successful businessman.

What begins for Rios as the search for the truth about Bill Ryan’s death becomes the search for the meaning of Ryan’s life as the tsunami of AIDS bears down on the gay community.

Teaser: KCR Preview

Was Bill Ryan's death an accident? Henry Rios has his doubts.

Carved in Bone
Available NOW!

The Series: Henry Rios Mysteries

|| [1] || [2] || [3] || [4] || [5] || [6] || [7] || [7.5] ||

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

Lay Your Sleeping Head [1]

**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**

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.

ne 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.”

[First published 1 March 1986 as "Little Death", this new edition 23 August 2019 , 200 pages]

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Goldenboy [2]

By the beginning of Goldenboy, Henry has become sober, finding spirituality in his recovery while becoming further engaged in gay activism.

He decides to assist a Los Angeles attorney who is dying of AIDS with the defense of a young gay man on trial for killing a coworker who threatened to out him.

Goldenboy probes explosive themes of homophobia and exploitation within the gay community and also introduces Josh Mandel, who will become a critical part of the series arc.

[Published 15 September 1988, 216 pages]

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Howtown [3]

**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**

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’s relationship with his HIV-positive lover, Josh Mandel.

This is a revised edition with an author's endnote.

[First published 1 March 1990 as "How Town", this new edition 1 July 2019, 213 pages]

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The Hidden Law [4]

**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**

The fourth novel in Michael Nava’s award-winning series takes Henry Rios back to his roots when he defends a Latino teenager accused of murder

When State Senator Gus Pena, a politician with a spotty past and an ambition to become mayor, is gunned down, the LAPD arrests Michael Ruiz, a hot-tempered teen who had spat violent words about Pena while they both attended a drug rehab center.

Believing in the troubled youth's innocence, lawyer Henry Rios takes the case, despite the fact that he's in the middle of a wrenching breakup with his HIV-positive lover, Josh.

As his personal life unravels, and the cops and press rush to judgment on Ruiz, Rios penetrates the highly protected world of L.A. politics to ferret out a most unlikely killer...

[First published 1 September 1992, this edition 1 July 2019, 168 pages]

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The Death of Friends [5]

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When Supreme Court judge Chris Chandler is found dead in his chambers, his old friend, Henry Rios, a gay Mexican American criminal defense lawyer, investigates and finds that the man had a secret life.

Defense lawyer Henry Rios has become a champion of outcasts in a city offering them little justice and less compassion. But Zack Bowen is more than just a client. Claiming to be the lover of Rios's longtime friend Chris Chandler, Zack has found Chandler brutally murdered. And now Zack needs a lawyer.

Rios's instinct is to believe his protestations of innocence, even though Zack quickly disappears. Now Rios must track him down through the earthquake-torn Valley, traversing the sleazy landscapes of Zack's past. He must discover why Chris--a staunch family man, resolutely in the closet--abandoned his wife and son and risked his career for an affair. What other secrets was he hiding? As Rios uses every legal twist to unravel the mystery of his friend's life and the riddle of his death, he glimpses the answer in the dark mirror of his own soul....

[First published 27 August 1996, this edition 1 July 2019, 195 pages]

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The Burning Plain [6]

Attorney Henry Rios fights for his freedom and his life when a homophobic serial killer targets gay men in Los Angeles

Defense attorney Henry Rios knows how the system can be weighted against you . . . especially if you’re gay. His worst nightmare becomes a reality when a man he had been on a date with the night before is slain. Relentlessly pursued by a homophobic Los Angeles Police Department cop, Rios goes from prime suspect to target when more gay men are savagely murdered. The victims all suffer the same fate: They’re beaten to death, with a hate message carved into their bodies, and they’re dumped in an alley.

Rios must break through a conspiracy of silence that reaches to the highest levels of Los Angeles politics and Hollywood power. And the closer he gets to the truth, the closer he gets to becoming an enraged killer’s next victim.

[Published 1 Dec 1997, 305 pages]

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Rag and Bone [7]

In Michael Nava’s final Henry Rios mystery, the Latino lawyer faces his most daunting personal and professional challenges as he comes to terms with his past—and a cache of family secrets

Henry Rios was dead for fifty-seven seconds when he suffered a heart attack in the courtroom. While he recovers, his sister, Elena, stays with him at the hospital, and they begin to repair their strained relationship, finally airing their thoughts and regrets about their childhood in an abusive home. But Elena has an extra surprise for Rios: Thirty years ago, when she was in college, she had a baby and gave her up for adoption. The girl, Vicky, grew up in foster homes, but now seeks out Elena for help escaping an abusive husband.

Despite Elena and Rios’s efforts, Vicky returns to her husband—but not long after, he’s shot dead in a motel room and Vicky claims to have blown him away. Rios doesn’t believe her confession, though, and finds evidence that suggests she’s innocent. Rios’s search for the facts leads him into a thicket of secrets and lies. As he fights for a niece he never knew he had, he must also combat the ever-present shadow of his own mortality and the truth about his past. A possible judgeship and a new love give him hope for the future in this stellar conclusion to the acclaimed Henry Rios series, about love, loss, and the enduring power of family.

[Published 19 March 2001, 304 pages] back to series | back to top

Street People: a novella [7.5]

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Ben Manso drifts through life, working as a rent boy, until a casual encounter with an eight-year-old street kid named Bobby at a convenience store changes everything.

When Ben sees Bobby again, the boy is with a man who claims to be Bobby’s father, but Ben suspects the man is a pedophile and the boy his captive. A third encounter draws Ben deeper into Bobby’s drama and forces him to face his own haunted past. After Ben’s well-intentioned plan to rescue Bobby puts the boy in even greater danger, Ben is forced to make a life-changing choice.

Street People is the story of lives at the margin, about the throw-away people we see without seeing, and the real meaning of family.

[Published 30 January 2018, 100 pages]

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About the Author

Michael Nava is the six-time Lambda Literary Award author of the Henry Rios novels and recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in LGBTQ Literature. The New York Times praised him as “one of our best” crime fiction writers. The New Yorker called Henry Rios “a detective unlike any other previous protagonist in American noir.”

Carved In Bone is the first Henry Rios novel in 20 years. Says novelist David Ebershoff (The Danish Girl) Carved In Bone is “rich, haunting and deeply engaged with the world.”

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