The Mexicans is a multifaceted portrait of the complex, increasingly turbulent neighbor to our south. It is the story of a country in crisis -- poverty, class tensions, political corruption -- as told through stories of individuals.

From Augustín, an honest cop, we learn that many in the Mexican police force use torture as their number-one-crime-solving technique; from Julio Scherer Garcia, a leading newspaper editor, we learn how kidnapping and intimidating phone calls stifle people despite his meager income; we hear from a homosexual teacher wary of bigotry in a land of machismo; and many others.

Moving from Mexico City discos to remote Indian towns, Patrick Oster tells of Mexicans whose lives reveal something vital about Mexico, and in doing so, helps to understand why many decide to risk their lives in order to have the opportunity to live in the United States.

If you ask people why the Berlin Wall came down so unexpectedly, those who remember those days might tell you it was because of President Ronald Reagan's famous "tear down this wall" speech. Many forget that address took place more than two years before Germans put sledgehammers and pick axes to the cement barrier as the beginning act of their reunification. Now, after a quarter of a century has passed, a story has begun to circulate about what really happened. It's a tale of a mysterious group with ties in many countries, a billionaire industrialist, the CIA, Stasi thugs, goosestepping East German soldiers, a Nazi general, massive disinformation - and murder. In the middle of the story is a Chicago homicide detective who gets tossed into those whirlwind times and becomes key to them all. "Oster's story is full of double agents and hidden agendas, which he ably ties into the days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. He provides enough historical context for readers with only a cursory understanding of Cold War politics that they should be able to follow the plot's various twists. Oster unravels the mystery with a steady, straightforward delivery befitting its protagonist(who) pushes and punches his way through the novel, which never strays from the action...Each passage reveals another layer of the mystery and keeps up the story's momentum...A solid, worthwhile espionage thriller." - Kirkus

It seemed an innocent enough idea. After Barnaby Gilbert got laid off with a nice severance, his boss suggested he take up a new hobby to fill up his free time. On his regular commuter train, Barnaby got an idea what that hobby would be. He decided to satisfy a curiosity he'd long had. An avid birder, he began tracking some regular passengers - people he'd always wondered about - to see where they went and what they did. In following a Chinese man, a schoolgirl, and a sexy woman, he used the same techniques he had to add hawks and herons to his life list. But in this quirky, tongue-in-cheek thriller, he found out pretty fast that humans were a much more dangerous species.