Why Does Beto O'Rourke Support Drug Reform?

Why does Beto O’Rourke support drug reform?

Because the War on Drugs doesn’t work

This became obvious to Beto O’Rourke and Susie Byrd when they were El Paso City Representatives and started to ask questions about why El Paso’s sister city Ciudad Juárez had become the deadliest city in the world.

Their research led to this book.

In Dealing Death and Drugs, Beto O'Rourke and Susie Byrd explore the costs and consequences of marijuana prohibition.

They argue that marijuana prohibition has created a black market so profitable that drug kingpins are billionaires and drug control doesn’t stand a chance. Using Juárez as their focus, they describe the business model of drug trafficking and explain why this illicit system has led to the never-ending slaughter of human beings. Their position: the only rational alternative to the War on Drugs is to end the current prohibition on marijuana.

Special: Buy a first edition copy of "Dealing Death and Drugs" for $10

‘That's Why Beto and I Wrote This Book’

Everyday in El Paso, we are assaulted with the rat-a-tat-tat of a daily death count in Juárez’s drug war and yet my daughter reports that marijuana is widely available at her school and has been since she was in 7th grade. If our current drug policy has not successfully shielded my children from the ability to access drugs, how can I—how can we—support a policy that accepts eight people dying every day in Juárez as the collateral damage in a war that is marketed as keeping drugs out of the hands of our kids?

And even more astounding: faced with the drug war death toll in Mexico, faced with the high costs of the drug war and faced with the failures of the existing drug war policies, the only response of politicians and policymakers in both Mexico and the United States is to do more of the same, committing more dollars to a 40-year strategy that has failed our nation and has destabilized our neighbor.

If Washington won’t do anything different; if Mexico City won’t do anything different, then it is up to us, the citizens of the border, to write a different history with a better ending than the script that has been handed to us. We want you to help.

We can start by rattling the cages of the federal politicians who write these laws and the bureaucrats who manage them.

That’s why Beto and I wrote this book.

—From Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico, afterword by Susie Byrd

Donate to Beto O'Rourke's campaign

Cinco Puntos Press supports Beto O’Rourke as a 2018 Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas.

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ALL AROUND US @ BOOKWORKS!

11AM AT BOOKWORKS IN ALBUQUERQUE

SATURDAY, MARCH 30

“Okay, I am ready to sell All Around Us! It is beautiful. I answered the phone just as I closed the book. I couldn't say hello for a couple of seconds because I had tears welling up.” —Connie Griffin, Bookworks, Albuquerque, NM

A transcendent, perfectly gorgeous book, as magical as childhood feels in its best times. Rich, warm, comforting words & images to hold closely in your mind. ―Naomi Shihab Nye


All Around Us begs to be shared over and over. The use of lines and strokes conveys energy, spirit, magic. And I love the way it connects us all to the idea that we come from inside, from the earth, from something gentle and primal, and that is where go back to—and we better take care of it.   —Yuyi Morales

ALSC Notable Children’s Book

2018 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book 

2018 American Indian Youth Literature Award: Picture Book Honor 

Tomás Rivera Award Best Picture Book 

Texas Institute of Letters Best Picture Book 

Illustrator Adriana Garcia and Author Xelena Gonzalez

Hang out with us in Denver at ALA Midwinter

Cinco Puntos is coming as a squad of strong women to ALA, with armloads of new galleys, books and swag. Stop by for a visit, Booth 1807A.

A lifelong love story not between two lovers but between a woman and her body.

Simone comes of age in WWI. She comes into her own in WWII as part of the French resistance. Frequently, she abandons herself to lust—particularly to a man named Jacques. She leaves her first husband for Jacques and spends over a decade as his lover. They eventually marry, yet Simone still sleeps with strangers, her husband the most distant of them all. What is she seeking? Simone isn’t sure. More than sex—a tenderness that lust can never fill. Just when her body feels most fragile, she meets Pierre, a much younger man, a novice at love-making, clumsy and overly emotional, a fool—yet there is something about him.

The river that runs through the wilderness opens his heart: the mountains burn, friends die, and green shoots sprout from the ashes.

The Gila River and Wilderness are the heart and soul of A Song for the River. Every summer since 2002, Connors has been perched in a tower 50 feet above the Gila Wilderness, watching for fire. His first book, Fire Season (30,000 sold), recounted the deep lessons learned about mountains, wilderness, fire, and solitude. A Song for the River, its sequel, updates and deepens the story: the mountain he loves goes up in flames; a lookout on another mountain whom he has come to love as brother dies in a freak accident; and three high school students he admires die tragically in an airplane crash while researching the wilderness and the wild river they wish to save. Connors channels their voices in a praise song of great urgency and makes a plea to save a vital piece of our natural and cultural heritage: the wild Gila River, whose waters are threatened by a potential dam.

Finally, a unified narrative of the fragmented mythology of pre-Columbian Mexico from before time to the Conquest.

The stories in Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan. In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins, Feathered Serpent, and Dark Heart of Sky, and how they built the world on a leviathan’s back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes—elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.

Once-errant stoners score the biggest load of Colombian pot that had yet to reach our shores. A true tale.

Against a 1970s backdrop of Vietnam, political corruption, and radical activism, comes the true story of a loose confederacy of thrill-seeking opportunists and disaffected veterans who pulled off the largest, most audacious pot smuggle yet attempted—over twenty-eight tons of primo Colombian headed for the densely populated coast of Massachusetts in a rusty shrimp boat at the height of hurricane season. From the borderland of El Paso to the High Sierra of Mexico to the coast of South America and back, this is how they parlayed their first puff into truckloads, planeloads, and ultimately, the mother lode. Folly Cove is a high-spirited tale of the early days, when the business of pot was a benign crusade to keep America high.

“A lot of people got high, a few people got rich, and nobody got hurt. As far as we were concerned, we broke a law that was already broken.”

Sit down with Xelena Gomez, Cynthia Weill, Lee Merrill Byrd and Jessica Powers to talk about their work, including All Around Us and the First Concepts board book collection.

We'll be taking pictures with people, too! Follow us @5puntosbooks   Follow Us on Instagram

Warehouse Sale: Books Going at 75 Percent Off

Cinco Puntos
An Indie Publisher
With a Big Heart
And a Small Warehouse
Our warehouse is filled to the brim with great books for readers of all ages, but we need to clear space for all the wonderful books we are publishing this spring.

Time to turn our predicament to your advantage, and to the advantage of the kids you know and serve! Cinco Puntos is offering its best discount ever to literacy organizations who can make bulk purchases. This is a great opportunity for libraries, literacy organizations and concerned citizens to stock up for Día de los Niños, summer reading programs and other book giveaways.




All the books are priced about 75% off retail price.

In a few instances, the price is somewhat higher or lower than that because of our markup goal. Because we are offering such good prices we do have a couple of requests:

• Quantities are limited and are offered on a first-come, first-served basis 
• Customer pays shipping from our warehouse in Tennessee (this is exactly what we are charged with no markup), 
• Invoices are net-10, 
• To qualify for these discounts, the total invoice subtotal must exceed $500,
• Case quantities only.

Talk to John Byrd.
Please write or call John Byrd for more information. Email johnbyrd@cincopuntos.com or call 915-838-1625.

Happy Reading!

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¡HOLIDAY SALE! 25% DISCOUNT

¡HOLIDAY SALE!

25% DISCOUNT ON ALL 

CINCO PUNTOS PRESS BOOKS
ON THE WEB OR AT OUR NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
701 TEXAS AVENUE 
IN THE WONDERFUL CITY OF EL PASO

Bilingual Early Readers

Children's Illustrated Picture Books

Joe Hayes Books

Young Adult Novels

Benjamin Alire Saenz

New Book of Poems

PLUS EVERYTHING ELSE

Ringside Seat to a Revolution 

by David Romo 

Crime Novels by Women! 

Won the Dashiell Hammett Award
for Best Crime Novel of the Year
and Shamus Award for Best Debut Crime Novel

Debut Author Marcie Rendon

of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation

ALL AROUND US! BOOKSELLERS RAVE!

·        

CINCO PUNTOS LOVES THE FOLKS AT INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES! And this is why! They read books. They love books. They hands-sell books they love. And it's so great when they love a Cinco Puntos Press book. Here are booksellers from around the country celebrating and hand-selling All Around Us (978-1-941026-76-2) by Xelena Gonzalez and illustrated by Adriana M. Garcia. 

“All Around Us is the best book I've read all year! There is great potential for handselling this title.The message is simple but profound— and the art work is stunning! I place a copy in the hands of all who enter our children's section and watch the magic unfold.”—Susan Post, owner of Book Woman, Austin, Texas.

“I LOVE this book! Thank you!  What a blessing!”—Claudia Maceo, The Twig Book Shop, San Antonio, TX

“A stunningly beautiful look at circles and cycles, family and tradition.”—Cecilia Cackley, East City Book Shop, Washington, DC

“Not everyone sees life and time as linear  as portrayed in this genuine and tender conversation between a grandfather and his granddaughter as they explore the significance of the circle both in their immediate day but also the history of their family and culture.  An authentic voice of perspective that is needed in our diverse world that begs for books that reflect the uniqueness of our multifaceted world.”— Jesica Sweedler Dehart of Bookpeople of Moscow, Idaho






“Okay, I am ready to sell All Around Us! It is beautiful.  I answered the phone just as I closed the book.  I couldn't say hello for a couple of seconds because I had tears welling up.”—Connie Griffin, Bookworks, Albuquerque, NM

3 Spooky Stories FLASH SALE from Cinco Puntos

Buy These Spooky Stories by Friday and get up to 50% off! 

MI FAMILIA CALACA By Cynthia Weill Paperback 978-1-941026-34-2 | Hardcover 978-1-935955-50-4

Welcome to the family! It’s just like yours: father, mother, sister, brother, abuelita, gato. Well, there’s something just a little bit different about this family. Maybe it’s those clothes they wear … just a little bit fashion backward. And the colors! So vibrant and … lively. Maybe that’s what it is. They are just so full of life. Familia-life.

Ages 3-6




¡EL CUCUY! By Joe Hayes Paperback 978-0-938317-78-4

Everyone hears at least one teasing reference to the “bogeyman” when they’re growing up, but not everyone knows him by name. In the Southwest and much of Mexico, he’s known as el Cucuy. (Pronounce it coo-COO-ee: draw the second syllable out like the hoot of a lonely night bird.)

Ages 5-10







LA LLORONA / THE WEEPING WOMAN By Joe Hayes
Paperback 978-0-938317-39-5

Have you ever heard the story of La Llorona, the ghost woman they say is crying and crying for her children? Some people say she cries along the river, while others think they’ve heard her in the desert, or down an alley right near their house. But almost everyone agrees that La Llorona is not a lady you want to meet late at night, when you’re out past your bedtime. Then you might learn more about her than you ever wanted to know!

BONUS: Watch storyteller Joe Hayes read La Llorona in this free video.
Ages 8 to Adult

Sale Details

25% Off These Books, and 50% Off When You Buy 10 or More

For Bulk Orders of 10 or more, Contact Mary Fountaine at Cinco Puntos Press. Sale ends Friday, 10/27/17 at midnight EST

HOT DOG! Cinco Puntos does the whole shebang!

Take a Break from Summer to See the New Books from Cinco Puntos

Hot dog! Cinco Puntos has some incredible books for adults, young adults and kids coming out this season. Here’s a sneak peek:




A gay Latino’s intimate journey through addiction, human desire, and broken love.

Benjamin Alire Saenz comes back to the discipline of poetry to reveal his troubled passage through a beautiful but disastrous love affair, fueled, in part, by good wine and bad drugs. This is a time of terrible violence—in the world, in Juárez a ten-minute walk away from his home, and at the corner convenience store where the homeless shuffle about, sucking on quarts of beer and selling drugs. Yet, through the healing practice of writing and painting, the poet intuits the innocent core of being human, a place nourished by compassion, the imagination and the exquisite taste of the last cigarette on earth.






Jaya’s a rich kid. Transgender. Rasa’s a victim of sex trafficking. A testament to the healing power of love.

Seventeen-year-old Jaya Mehta detests wealth, secrets, and privilege, though he has them all. Rasa Santos, a beautiful young woman, is of mixed ethnicity. She's the sole provider for her three younger siblings. Rasa's only inheritance is her stunning beauty and her mother's trade, prostitution. Neither Jaya nor Rasa have ever known real love or close family—not until their chance meeting one sunny day on a mountain in Hau’ula.

The unlikely love that blooms between them must survive the stranglehold their respective pasts have on them. Each of their present identities has been shaped by years of extreme family struggles. By the time they cross paths, Jaya is a transgender outsider with depressive tendencies and the stunningly beautiful Rasa thinks sex is her only power until a violent pimp takes over her life. Will their love transcend and pull them forward, or will they remain stuck and separate in the chaos of their pasts? In the end, their story is a testament to the healing power of love.

The history of the world, from Ometeotl to the Aztecs, in an exciting, unified narrative.

The stories in Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan. In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins, Feathered Serpent, and Dark Heart of Sky, and how they built the world on a leviathan’s back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes—elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.






The true story of the most audacious pot smuggle ever attempted.

Against a 1970s backdrop of war, corruption and radical activism comes the true story of a loose confederacy of thrill-seeking opportunists and disaffected veterans who pull off the largest pot heist on record: more than 28 tons of primo Colombian headed for the densely populated coast of Massachusetts in a rusty shrimp boat at the height of hurricane season. From the borderland of El Paso to the High Sierra of Mexico to the coast of South America and back, this is how they parlayed their first puff into truckloads, planeloads, and ultimately, the mother lode. Folly Cove is a high-spirited tale of the early days, when the business of pot was a benign crusade to keep America high. 

A girl learns from her grandfather that circles exist in the most unusual places. 

Grandpa says circles are all around us. He points to the rainbow that rises high in the sky after a thundercloud has come. “Can you see? That’s only half of the circle. That rest of it is down below, in the earth.” He and his granddaughter meditate on gardens and seeds, on circles seen and unseen, inside and outside us, on where our bodies come from and where they return to. They share and create family traditions in this stunning exploration of the cycles of life and nature.






A lifelong falling-in-love story between a woman and her body.

A woman’s story of sex, lust and finally love, spanning WWI to WWII in Paris. It’s soon after the Great War that Simone comes of age, overwhelmed with sexual longing, but it’s not until after the tragedy of Hitler’s occupation and her part in the French resistance, her body slipping in Parkinson’s Disease, that she discovers the truth of her longing. Early in her adult life, and frequently, she sleeps with strangers and abandons herself to lust—particularly to a man named Jacques. She leaves her first husband for Jacques and spends over a decade as his lover in the intellectual circles of Paris. They eventually marry, yet Simone still sleeps with strangers, her husband the most distant of them all. What is she seeking? Simone isn’t sure. More than sex—a tenderness that lust can never fill. Just when her body feels most fragile, she meets Pierre, a much younger man, a novice at love-making, clumsy and overly emotional, a fool—yet there is something about him.

Playing Beauty Party in Spanish and English!

Birdie and Grandma are having a girls’ day! They must have had fun because Grandma’s all worn out. Birdie has a solution: a makeover! It’ll give Grandma a chance to relax. Birdie insists that Grandma lie down because this beauty parlor has a lot of moving parts—chinny-chin-chin hair removal, long stretches of blush, slashes of lipstick, and eyeshadow. Earrings, scarves, the works! Birdie knows best: she owns this beauty parlor!


See everything from Cinco Puntos: Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @5puntosbooks

Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story

Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story

A novel by Sonia Patel

Publishes September 2017

Jaya’s a rich kid. Rasa’s broke. Opposite sides of the tracks. Romeo and Juliet, on fair Oahu. A testament to the healing power of love.

Seventeen-year-old Jaya Mehta detests wealth, secrets, and privilege, though he has them all. The big secret he keeps from his traditional Gujarati Indian parents: he's transgender. Rasa Santos, a beautiful young woman, is of mixed ethnicity. She's the sole provider for her three younger siblings, three of them. Rasa's only inheritance is her stunning beauty and her mother's trade, prostitution. Neither Jaya nor Rasa have ever known real love or close family—not until their chance meeting one sunny day on a mountain in Hau’ula.

The unlikely love that blooms between them must survive the stranglehold their respective pasts have on them. Each of their present identities has been shaped by years of extreme family struggles. By the time they cross paths, Jaya is a transgender outsider with depressive tendencies and the stunningly beautiful Rasa thinks sex is her only power until a violent pimp takes over her life. Will their love transcend and pull them forward, or will they remain stuck and separate in the chaos of their pasts? In the end, their story is a testament to the healing power of love.

SONIA PATEL'S YA debut, Rani Patel In Full Effect, was a finalist for the Morris Award, was listed on YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, and was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Teen Books of 2016. Patel is a psychiatrist who works with children and adults. She was trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii. She lives and practices in Hawaii.

Follow Sonia on Twitter and Facebook. You want be disappointed. Sonia rocks with a hip hop Hawaiian beat.

Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story

978-1-941026-86-1, hardback, $16.95
978-1-941026-87-8, trade paper, $11.95

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

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Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky by David Bowles

Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky:

The Myths of Mexico 

By David Bowles

A contemporary retelling of the origin myths of Mexico, crafted as a single fluid and cohesive narrative.

PUBLICATION DATE: January 2018

The stories in Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky trace the history of the world from its beginnings in the dreams of the dual god Ometeotl, to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and the fall of the great city Tenochtitlan. In the course of that history we learn about the Creator Twins, Feathered Serpent, and Dark Heart of Sky, and how they built the world on a leviathan’s back; of the shape-shifting nahualli; and the aluxes—elfish beings known to help out the occasional wanderer. And finally, we read Aztec tales about the arrival of the blonde strangers from across the sea, the strangers who seek to upend the rule of Motecuhzoma and destroy the very stories we are reading.

David Bowles stitches together the fragmented mythology of pre-Colombian Mexico into an exciting, unified narrative in the tradition of William Buck’s Ramayana, Robert Fagles’ Iliad, and Neil Gaiman’s Norse Myths. General readers who enjoy learning about the mythologies of cultures will delight in this rich retelling of these little known stories of Mexico.

Legends and myths captured David Bowles’ imagination as a young Latino reader. He was fascinated with epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Despite growing up on the United States/Mexico border, he had never read a single Aztec or Mayan myth until he was in college. This experience inspired him to reconnect with that forgotten past. Several of his previous books have incorporated themes from ancient Mexican myths.

Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

ISBN 978-1-941026-71-7, hardback, $24.95
ISBN 978-1-941026-72-4, trade paper, $16.95

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution / Publishes January 2018