Abraham Lincoln and Mexico: A history of courage, intrigue and unlikely friendships

I Love Baja!

Living at Lake Chapala

It is a book to keep beside the bed, or on the coffee table, or even on the car seat.
Arranged in six parts, the 76 chapters tell you just about everything you could want to know about living the Mexico adventure.
At the very beginning of Living at Lake Chapala, Judy tells us "This is the book I needed when I arrived in Mexico." It might be the book you need as well.... read more
The Girl from Veracruz

It features the same team of detectives that we have come to care for in the preceding novels: Paul Zacher, age 40, a reasonably popular local artist; the lovely Maya Sanchez, his life partner (for the most part) and now head of the Paul Zacher Agency; and Cody Williams, a retired homicide detective from Peoria, Illinois. We also meet again Licenciado Diego Delgado, their contact with the San Miguel Judicial Police.
The story begins at the morgue... read more
Something Like a Dream

Much of the novel, which takes place in 1982, is about the Huichols and Richter means "to introduce the reader to the Huichol people, their culture and religious life centered on peyote visions…."
For the Huichol, "the sacred and the secular are the same world, real and physical, enrapturing and mystical. Body, mind, and spirit; corn, deer, and peyote; nothing separates the idea from the daylight or the dream. It is all the same."
As in the finest of adventure stories — from The Odyssey to the present — Robert Richter´s protagonist, Cotton Waters, "Algo," is a seemingly ordinary man, not particularly successful in the eyes of the world, who for complicated reasons accepts a journey that has extraordinary challenges and that will change him forever...
read moreWildlife of the Yucatan Peninsula: The Explorer Family's Guide and Journal

Riding off the Edge of the Map

Do you remember that best seller several decades ago, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which author Robert Pirsig details (but gets lost in digressions) a motorcycle trip from Wisconsin to California?
David Bryen's new book, Riding off the Edge of the Map, is a much better book, detailing (and reflecting upon) a far more fascinating motorcycle trip — through Mexico's Copper Canyon.
What began as a pleasure trip metamorphosed into something else: "The highway had deteriorated from asphalt to terror..."
Western Mexico: A Traveler's Treasury, 4th edition

Playing for Pancho Villa

And so… perhaps lacking judgment because of the mercury poisoning, Frank opted for danger as well as adventure. On Tosca, his beloved mare, he rode south, and fifty miles west of El Paso he crossed the border into Mexico.
Frank, "with a fool's luck, managed to pick his way… between horse thieves from both sides, the Texas rangers who pursued them, Pancho Villa's Dorados, General Pershing's 6,000 gringo troops who were chasing Villa after the raid at Columbus, New Mexico,... read more
Lancandon Journal - 1969

In 1969, this culture was already in decline, undermined by the relentless forces of what some still call progress.
Jungle adventures are always challenging. This trip was a very difficult one for Gary, his young companion, and although difficult as well for Krustev, the artist was generally of a calm and philosophically disposed spirit... read more
Let the Water Hold Me Down

It is written with skill and with grace, and the old verities that are at the heart of being human are here: loss and grief, guilt and longing, loyalty and love.
Set in modern-day Mexico, it tells the story of Hank Singer and is also about his relationship with César Lobos de Madrid, whose "family was one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most politically connected in Chiapas, if not in all of Mexico."
Hank has arrived just a few weeks before the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, led by Subcomandante Marcos, who on January 1, 1994, declared war against the government and the military... read more
The Devil's Workshop

Feeling detached, perhaps defensively, from his plummeting body, Sands wonders, "How had the little people emerged from the painting over his buffet?
It was his Rafael Cantú masterpiece, The Last Supper, the prize of his collection. And they were the characters from the painting. He recognized the odd, ragged leather outfits.
Had he been murdered by these nightmare versions of Christ and the Apostles?" ... read more
Xtabentum: A Novel of Yucatan

The young Amanda, with the help of her thoughtful father, begins to understand la Casta Divina, the Divine Class, and how most members of this class "considered themselves superior by birth and the lighter color of their skin." read more
The Theft of the Virgin

In The Theft of the Virgin, sixty paintings from the popular Vergruen Reference Collection of outstanding masterpieces of art — all forgeries — are on temporary display at the Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende... But are they all forgeries?
Paul Zacher, one of many talented artists in San Miguel de Allende, is our protagonist and for the most part our narrator.
Zacher suspects a scheme that is putting originals into the hands of very amoral and very wealthy collectors. read more
San Miguel de Allende: A Place in the Heart - Expatriates Find Themselves Living in Mexico

The idea of the book originated when Scherber, after living in San Miguel for only eight months, began asking himself questions like: "What had I given up to come here, and what had I gained? What was my new role in the community? Was I an exile? An expatriate? Would I ever live in the States again? How did I react to Americans I saw here visiting? What had I done?" read more
The Mango Orchard: The Extraordinary True Story of Family Lost and Found

Worried about life passing him by, in 1898 Arturo "kissed his sweetheart Mariah goodbye and set off on his Mexican adventures."
Bayley, over one-hundred years later, "was plagued by the same fear about life passing me by." read more
In a God's Eye

She helps her gardener with his English, takes pleasure in her garden, is fascinated by the old Mayan legends, grateful for the sacrifices of their gods, and holds sacred the food she receives.
A principle she lives by is this: "be thankful and say so regularly." She feels in her heart that this religious attitude is "much easier to grasp than the more intellectual, less sensory religions…." read more
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato & The Bajío

A resident of San Miguel de Allende for several years, the author, Julie Doherty, writes both with affection and enthusiasm about the Bajío — a vast central plain that includes the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro.
She concentrates on two lovely towns, San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, but she also offers us a glimpse of Querétaro City, Tequisquiapan, San Sebastian Bernal, Dolores Hildalgo, Mineral de Pozos, and the large manufacturing city of León. read more
Moving to Mexico's Lake Chapala: Checklists, How-To's, and Practical Information and Advice for Expats and Retirees

Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez, Editor-in-Chief of El Ojo del Lago, has this to say: "I found it highly readable, most comprehensive, and flawlessly organized. I think it's the best book of its kind that I have read, and I have been down here for 25 years."
Is the information current? You bet! Why? Because Lisa Jorgensen only moved here this past spring. read more
Migration

Migration is his third book in a little over three years. Now collecting belongings has been replaced by collecting experiences, and collecting memories of past experiences.
I am reminded a bit of one of my dad's favorite tee-shirts, which reads: "The less you own, the more you have." read more
Ajijic: 500 Years of Adventures

Outdoors in Western Mexico

And in this book they have gathered articles they have written about rivers and canyons, caves, volcanoes (both active and inactive), hot (and cold) springs, waterfalls, petroglyphs, pre-Columbian tombs, circular pyramids, boiling mud pots, even poltergeists, and exotic flora and fauna… all within a few hours of Guadalajara. read more
Flirting in Spanish: What Mexico taught me about love, living and forgiveness

The story began in 1992 in San Miguel de Allende. Susan, in Mexico less than three months and having "decimated whatever savings I once had," supplemented her meagre but easy-earned modeling income by teaching English.
Carlos, the poor Mexican teenager, was indeed wise for his years; after her first class was over, he alone "remained, still seated at the second desk in the middle row, watching me." read more
Infernal Drums

"He found a cheap room at a dive called Hotel Milan in Old Town — the historic center of a coastal metropolis split into neatly demarcated districts of progress and poverty on a peninsula snaking up the coastline of Nayarit."
In Mazatlan he joins up with three New Zealanders, harmless jerks, introduces himself "and played at acting the chum." In San Blas — "on a spit of white land divided by estuaries, surrounded by jungle" — they buy some cheap dope, but the transaction turns out to be a set-up read more
Drums in the Hills: A personal story of the Mexican Revolution
