Contents include The cinnamon colt--Butterfly dog--The comet--Placido--The widow's gift--The Mulatos River journal.

From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All, a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains. Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source of income; murder is all but a regional pastime. The Mexican army occasionally goes in to burn marijuana and opium crops—the modern treasure of the Sierra Madre—but otherwise the government stays away. In its stead are the drug lords, who have made it one of the biggest drug-producing areas in the world. Fifteen years ago, journalist Richard Grant developed what he calls "an unfortunate fascination" with this lawless place. Locals warned that he would meet his death there, but he didn't believe them—until his last trip. During his travels Grant visited a folk healer for his insomnia and was prescribed rattlesnake pills, attended bizarre religious rituals, consorted with cocaine-snorting policemen, taught English to Guarijio Indians, and dug for buried treasure. On his last visit, his reckless adventure spiraled into his own personal heart of darkness when cocaine-fueled Mexican hillbillies hunted him through the woods all night, bent on killing him for sport. With gorgeous detail, fascinating insight, and an undercurrent of dark humor, God's Middle Finger brings to vivid life a truly unique and uncharted world.

In this fourth volume of J.P.S. Brown's Arizona Saga series, the Cowden family continues its battle for grazing rights in Arizona Territory along the Mexican border. The family defends cattle country on the Santa Cruz river that the Apaches call The Enchanted Land in a war against an eastern syndicate that seeks to drive out all the region's original settlers. Through bribery, slave trading and heroin smuggling, the syndicate led by boss Duncan Vincent, increases its political influence and wealth and legitimizes a disciplined gang of thugs that calls itself the Arizona Rangers. The Cowden brothers have only their guns, fists, good horses, and good neighbors with which to defend themselves in the total range war that ensues. They separate during the battle and Les Cowden finds himself alone in the fight and in love with a girl who is one of his family's worst enemies.

Ten stories and a novella. Steampunk, Sci-Fi Dystopian, Fantasy, American Wild West, Horror, American Detective Noir -- Freelance, The Kid in the Cold, In the Eyes, Blanket of Crickets, Hunger, Invisible Chain, Le Morte d'Dupin, The Spring Stand, Three Ravens, The Case of the Glowing Scarabs, Mile High Cold