The drug war that has turned Juárez, Mexico, into a killing field that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 2008 captures headlines almost daily. But few accounts go all the way down to the streets to investigate the lives of individual drug users. One of those users, Scott Comar, survived years of heroin addiction and failed attempts at detox and finally cleaned up in 2003. Now a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso in the history department's borderlands doctoral pro...

In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American. El Sicario is the hidden face of America's war on drugs. He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. He is a hit man who came off the killing fie...

The victim of a police shooting connects a Hispanic detective to his own tragic past in this powerful novel from “a tremendous talent” (Lee Child).On a clear, moonlit night in December, police detective Jimmy Vega races to the scene of a reported home invasion in an upscale New York community. As Vega arrives, he spots a Hispanic man who fits the description of the armed intruder, running from the victim’s estate. Vega chases him into the woods. When the suspect re...

From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family’s journey through the New World.A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduced the world to Junot Díaz's exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator— Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family’s precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage fr...

An astonishing story that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States, now updated with a new Epilogue and Afterword, photos of Enrique and his family, an author interview, and more—the definitive edition of a classic of contemporary AmericaBased on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, this page-turner about the power of fa...

In the 60's, Carlos Caggiani traveled to 26 countries on an old motorcycle with hardly a penny to his name. He suffered famine, intense weather, was chased by the FBI, was shot at in Bolivia, and even survived a serious accident. The experiences in this book demonstrate a human being's tenacity and triumph in the face of adversity.

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad.In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants-a beauty queen ...

**This important and timely book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border."The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy" —The Atlantic**In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto U...

The award-winning memoir of life in an LA street gang from the acclaimed Chicano author and former Los Angeles Poet Laureate: "Fierce, and fearless" ( The New York Times).Luis J. Rodríguez joined his first gang at age eleven. As a teenager, he witnessed the rise of some of the most notorious cliques in Southern California. He grew up knowing only a life of violence—one that revolved around drugs, gang wars, and police brutality. But unlike most of those ar...

This is the untold true story of one citizen's pointless torture and month-long captivity. The story, formerly mistold if not utterly overlooked, has been made into a feature film. Even as a dark comedy, there is little amusement to be found in human suffering. The sick and twisted minds of Mr. Schiller's captors would be fodder for the Darwin Awards if the results were not so alarmingly inhumane. Physical, mental and emotional torture, as well as sensory deprivation and starvation, the pr...

A Rio de Janeiro ThrillerCopacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Three policemen have been killed over the course of a few days. Espinosa, chief of the 12th Precinct, doesn't have much to go on. When the body of a woman connected to one of the dead cops is found on the sidewalk below her apartment window, things get even more complicated, as a reputed "witness"—the wife of a high-ranking government official—becomes obsessed with the case, and with Espinosa.Nothing is q...

More than ten people are murdered every day in Ciudad Juárez, a city about the size of Philadelphia. As Mexico has descended into a feudal narco-state-one where cartels, death squads, the army, and local police all fight over billions of dollars in profits from drug and human trafficking-the border city of Juárez has been hit hardest of all. And yet, more than a million people still live there. They even love their impoverished city, proudly repeating its mantra: "Amor por Juárez."...