I am an author, attorney, artist, and entrepreneur. My experience as a litigator for over forty years, as well as my experience as a painter and an investor, has inspired and influenced me to write the Chance Cormac legal thrillers series.
When you enter Winslowâs world of drug cartels, be prepared for violence and intrigue at the US-Mexico border. Winslow vividly portrays the ongoing battle between the DEA and the cartels.
Power of the Dog is the first book in the Cartel Trilogy. Winslow takes the reader south of the border as the War on Drugs confronts the brutal realities of the drug trade and its victims.
'Breathtaking' JEREMY CLARKSON 'Winslow's masterpiece (so far) ... should have a place on every crime freak's bookshelf. Superb' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY _______________________ A brilliant page-turning thriller of power and revenge on the front lines of the drug war.
Drug lord Miguel Angel Barrera is head of the Mexican drug federacion, responsible for millions of dollars worth of cocaine traffic into the US and the torture and murder of those who stand in its way. His nephew, Adan Barrera, is his worthy successor.
Art Keller is a US government operative, so determined to obtain revenge for a murdered colleague that hisâŠ
I first came face to face with the expansive and unchecked authority of the Border Patrol about a decade ago when I was stopped five times in less than an hour while driving on a Texas country road. Could the Border Patrol really stop any vehicle they want without any reason whatsoever deep inside the United States? That day set me off on a journey through the borderlands and into the history of the Supreme Court in order to tell the untold story of how the Border Patrol became the most dangerous police force in the United States.
While writing my own book, this is the book that I had to keep going back to for all the historical detail on the early Border Patrol. Itâs an academic book, but it does a great job of explaining the story of the early Border Patrol from the perspective of the people in the borderlands.Â
For much of the twentieth century, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials recognized that the US-Mexico border region was different. Here, they confronted a set of political, social, and environmental obstacles that prevented them from replicating their achievements on Angel Island and Ellis Island, the most restrictive immigration stations in the nation. In response to these challenges, local INS officials resorted to the law, nullifying, modifying, and creating the nation's immigration laws and policies for the borderlands.
In The INS on the Line, S. Deborah Kang traces the ways in which the INS on the US-Mexico border made and remadeâŠ
As
a mystery writer myself, I know what it takes to write a great mystery
thriller, and LâEtoile has it all.
Police
detective Nathan Parker is enmeshed in a web of crime in the desert Southwest.
While confronting human trafficking and drug cartels, he comes up hard against
his own law enforcement authorities.
Dead Dropis a death-defying journey into the bowels of bad, and
Parkerâs ability to come through it alive is a testament to his guile, strength
of character, and, sometimes, sheer good luck. The thriller is tautly written
and straightforward with no added sugar, with a setting as unforgiving as
Parkerâs ruthless adversaries.
Youâre in for a rollercoaster ride, so hold on
to your seats.
Hundreds go missing each year making the dangerous crossing over the border. What if you were one of them?
While investigating the deaths of undocumented migrants in the Arizona desert, Detective Nathan Parker finds a connection to the unsolved murder of his partner by a coyote on a human smuggling run. The new evidence lures Parker over the border in search of the truth, only to trap him in a strange and dangerous land. If he's to survive, Parker must place his life in the hands of the very people he once pursued.
I have always been a seeker, fascinated by all cultures, philosophies, and spiritual perspectives. Although the concept is often differentâfor some, itâs a place of refuge, feeling safe or sheltered from pursuit, danger, or trouble; for others, itâs a state of being, an inner peace, Iâve found that the search for sanctuaryâsafe-havenâelsewhereâhas ancient roots and contemporary reverberations. My novel, Guesthouse for Ganesha, further heightened my interest in this subject, for my protagonist, Esther GrĂŒnspan, both deeply wounded and unsafe, was compelled to seek sanctuary. As a first-time novelist with an 18-year journey to publication, I fully immersed myself in this topicâs study and comprehension.
In Debra Thomasâs compassionately rendered Luz, her protagonistâs (Alma) border crossing from Mexico into the United States is relayed in painful, harrowing, and often shocking detail. It is a powerful and, at times, difficult read. Yet an important one. I often forgot that this is a work of fiction, as the story Thomas so deftly portrays is all too common and all too real, especially for a resident of Southern California, which I am. However, it is one filled with hope and determination and the unwavering spirit of a young, passionate girl in search of answers.
Alma Cruz wishes her willful teenage daughter, Luz, could know the truth about her past, but there are things Luz can never know about the journey Alma took to the US to find her missing father.
In 2000-three years after the disappearance of her father, who left Oaxaca to work on farms in California-Alma sets out on a perilous trek north with her sister, Rosa. What happens once she reaches the US is a journey from despair to hope.
Timeless in its depiction of the depths of family devotion and the blaze of first love, Luz conveys, with compassion andâŠ
As a writer, Iâve been deeply influenced by Southern literatureâespecially the work of William Faulkner and Flannery OâConnor. Even though Iâm not from the South myself, I am drawn to Southern writersâ immodesty. I believe much of contemporary literature is too timid. It is about the mundane, the everyday. It does not elevate; instead, it diminishes. Much of the literature of the South is biblical in its sensibilities. It is unafraid to deal with the big universal issues with language that is equally big and universal. It does not pander to modesty or postmodern selfconsciousness. It is audacious. Itâs the kind of writing that made me want to write.
Mixing Faulknerâs gothic language with McCarthyâs sense of history, Blake writes a story of two brothers torn apart by circumstance and their experiences in the Mexican-American War. Blake captures that sense of aimless wandering that echoes Faulknerâs storiesâthe rootless characters meandering across the country, not only unsure of their destinations but maybe even indifferent to them. To me, one of the most profound twists in the book is that the brothers donât seem to care which side of the war they participate in. They are itinerants whose purpose in the world is simply circumstantial; they are instruments of universal forces that they neither question nor understand.Â
The offspring of a whore mother and a homicidal father, Edward and John Little are driven from their home in the Florida swamplands by a sching parent's treacheries, and by a shameful, horrific act that will haunt their dreams for the rest of their days. Joining the swelling ranks of the rootless--wandering across an almost surreal bloodland populated by the sorrowfully lost and defiantly damned--two brothers are separated by death and circumstance in the lawless "Dixie City" of New Orelans, and dispatched by destiny to opposing sides in a fierce and desperate territorial struggled between Mexico and the United States.âŠ
When I applied to college, I thought Iâd study science and pursue my passions for art and justice separately. Then, I went to Kenya for my first excavation and found that archaeology combined my love for storytelling, data analysis, and making the world a better, safer, more inclusive place. As much as I love movies like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I never saw myself in them. They just donât capture what I love about archaeology! Now, my researchâlike this listâis dedicated to really understanding what makes archaeology so compelling, so rewarding, and most capable of telling nuanced stories that make us think differently about our past.
This book, for me, is something of a guiding star. It is profound, scientific, powerful, and directly applicable to contemporary debates about policy, governance, and justice. Archaeology isnât just about collecting objects; instead, most archaeologists I know are deeply invested in how archaeology can help inform the decisions we make in the present. MacArthur âgeniusâ award winner Jason de Leon shows the full potential of this in this book, where he combines archaeological, ethnographic, and forensic methods to reveal the impact of immigration policy on real human bodies and families.
Maybe itâs cheating to include this book on this list; it isnât just how archaeology worksâit has set a new standard for archaeologists to make contributions that are relevant and resonant enough to make a change in the world.
In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De Leon sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time-the human consequences of US immigration policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De Leon uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of "Prevention through Deterrence," the federal border enforcement policy thatâŠ
Iâm a scholar of gender and state violence, and I live and work at the US-Mexico border. For the past several years, Iâve worked collaboratively with large teams of Latinx-identified students to study the impacts of US immigration policies on migrants from Mexico and Central America. We realized that even though about half of immigrants are women, around 95% of deportees are men. So, we started to think about how US policies criminalize immigrant men. I became especially interested in how immigration enforcement (at the border and beyond) intersects with mass incarceration. In the list, I pick up books that trace the multinational reach of the carceral apparatus that comes to treat migrants as criminals.
Muehlmannâs beautiful, gripping book reveals how cartels and drug violence are not separate from everyday life, but instead interwoven with almost all facets of life on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border.
In a narrative style, she traces how everyday people unwittingly get into supporting the drug trade, or find themselves wrapped up in supporting traffickers without their knowledge. She also illustrates how the figure of the ânarcoâ (drug trafficker) gets idealized in the borderlands. An incredible read for anyone interested in the complexity of the US-Mexico border.
When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the "war on drugs": despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico's north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige. In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in ruralâŠ
As an immigration legal scholar and lawyer, I read about immigration a lot. From laws that seem written to confuse to articles in academic journals written for an audience of experts, Iâm lucky to love what I doâand so I enjoy most of what I read. But these books are special. They drew me in and wouldnât let go until the last page. Whether fiction or non-fiction, they are written by storytellers who bring laws and policies to life.
Much of âthe line,â as Border Patrol agents and migrants sometimes call the border, is far from big cities and curious journalists. And a lot of what happens there, happens under cover of darkness or behind the secured doors of Border Patrol stations.
As a former Border Patrol agent, CantĂș saw what happened when no one else was looking. His memoir shares it with the rest of us.
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2019, an electrifying memoir from a Mexican-American US Border Patrol guard
'Stunningly good... The best thing I've read for ages' James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life
Francisco Cantu was a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012.
In this extraordinary account, he describes his work in the desert along the Mexican border. He tracks humans through blistering days and frigid nights. He detains the exhausted and hauls in the dead. The line he is sworn to defend, however, begins to dissolve. Haunted by nightmares, Cantu abandons the Patrol for civilianâŠ
âTruth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.â Frederic Raphael. When I was a child, a relative often told stories of a cowboy gear clad cousin who visited our New York family from Texas and claimed heâd once served in Pancho Villaâs army. These tales were the spark that eventually led to Viva, Rose! and my interest in storytelling as well. Thereâs something about the combination of lived experience and fiction that I find irresistibly engaging and exciting. Iâve worked as a journalist, ghostwriter, and editor, but my happiest happy place is writing and reading stories birthed from a molten core of real life.
This book was inspired by the authorâs family stories of the Mexican Revolution. When government armies destroy twelve-year-old Petraâs village and home, sheâs forced to lead her grandmother, younger sister, and baby brother through the trackless desert to survive. They encounter kindly monks, ruthless federales, and a band of Villistas who want Petra to join them, but she never veers from her determination to take her family to safety and freedom. This is a powerful read, and Iâm thankful and appreciative for the insight it offers into warâs effect on helpless citizens, and the enormous courage, strength, and determination required of every refugee forced to flee their homeland.
As an immigration legal scholar and lawyer, I read about immigration a lot. From laws that seem written to confuse to articles in academic journals written for an audience of experts, Iâm lucky to love what I doâand so I enjoy most of what I read. But these books are special. They drew me in and wouldnât let go until the last page. Whether fiction or non-fiction, they are written by storytellers who bring laws and policies to life.
Olivares is also a migrant who knows what itâs like to have his family split apart by immigration laws. Read it for the play-by-play account of family separation in 2018 but enjoy it because in Olivares the future of migration breathes, walks, and fights back.
INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD WINNER - The Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book
This deeply personal perspective from a human rights lawyerâwhose work on the front lines of the fight against family separations in South Texas intertwines with his own story of immigrating to the United States at thirteenâreframes the United States' history as a nation of immigrants but also a nation against immigrants.
