A mother tries to get herself abducted, first for money, and then for appreciation.

"After all, Tim could not replace me with just any woman he plucked off the streets. He’d have to date first, and then there’d be nannies and maids to pay, restaurant bills, and eHarmony fees. Not to mention the time he’d lose on the endeavor, which, multiplied by his hourly rate, would cost a considerable amount. Viewed in this light, my value was significant. I used to work in marketing and view matters at all levels of illumination."

Seventeen-year-old Israel Arenas Durán disappeared after being arrested near his home in Nuevo León. He is one of more than 25,000 who have gone missing in Mexico since 2006.

An exploited celebrity’s long journey home.

Two friends travel to Mexico while dealing with individual deaths.

"Late in the afternoon Allison and I happen upon a parade in the oldest part of Oaxaca―more out-of-tune horn-players and wild-hot colors and heart-shaped garlands and costumes and photos of people gone but still remembered and cherished. Two tiny girls dressed in white, like angels or brides or spirits, carry a baby-sized cardboard coffin on their shoulders. These good people of Oaxaca have learned, one generation to the next, how to make this annual occasion of loss into celebration."

A woman travels to Mexico at the request of her married lover/boss.

"The driver has a picture of his family on the dashboard, like the one Gustavo has on his desk at work of his two little runts, his wife, all in cowboy hats or sombreros. Meera doesn’t know the difference. In the picture, his wife comes across as a woman who likes to be in charge: big boobs, square shoulders, a sturdy ass and yet apparently confident in tight jeans. Meera doesn’t know her name, doesn’t want to know it. But in her head, when she thinks of her, her name is Gustava."

An interview with a Mexican-born American attorney who defended and eventually smuggled for the cartels in the ’90s.

On lucha libre’s exóticos, “wrestlers who dress in drag and kiss their rivals, never quite revealing whether the joke is on their opponents, themselves or conservative Mexican society at large.”

In early 2012, the bones of a woman and young boy were found near the Arizona-Mexico border. The author investigates who they were and how they died.

On the hundreds of corpses that go unindentified every year along the U.S.-Mexico border.

An investigation into shootings by U.S. Border Agents that have killed six Mexicans on Mexican soil over the past five years.

A look at the Mexican drug wars from the point of view of a narco’s mistress in Juárez.

A generation that has seen inestimable violence comes of age in Juarez.

The underground routes by which drugs enter the U.S. from Mexico, and the officials who’ve found it almost impossible to curb their construction.

How, and why, the world got it wrong.

Crime, drugs, and politics in Guadalajara.

How a Mexican drug cartel makes its billions.

A profile of the Mexican newsweekly, a “lone voice” in reporting on the narcos.

Murder in the Juarez Valley:

A few weeks after Saul Reyes and his family fled Mexico, I drove to an immigrant shelter in downtown El Paso to see him. As the former city secretary of Guadalupe, Saul had once been in charge of recording the births and deaths of everyone in his hometown. He’d taken it upon himself now to collect every single name of those who had died or disappeared in Guadalupe since the killing began in 2008. Through media reports and meetings with the many valley exiles now living in Texas, Saul had compiled a list of the town’s dead and disappeared. Showing me the book, he turned page after page of names. So far he had counted 180 dead, 26 disappeared, and eight unknown bodies dumped in his small town of 3,000 people. “There are a lot more, but these are the ones I’ve been able to collect,” he said. In his careful, spidery script, he had written on one page the names of his six family members.

The intertwined destinies of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.

John Ross, rebel reporter, became the sort of devoted gringo scribe who would give up drugs and drinking in order to better write about the native revolutionaries; the sort of man who used dolls to preach armed revolution to high schoolers in the weeks after September 11th.

American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.

Over the course of a year, Luke Dittrich will be walking the entire 1,933 miles of the Mexico-US border “from the beach to Gulf” with a stroller. The first in a series.

Has Mexico become a failed state?

A suitcase was smuggled from Spain to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War containing negatives from three photographers would later become legends and all die in war zones. The suitcase disappeared.