This is the first collection in the UK for Mexican poet Victor Manuel Mendiola, although his work has been appearing in small-press editions, in others' collections and in journals for some time. His collected poems 1987-2002, Tan oro y negro (UNAM, Mexico City), won New York's Premio Latino de Literatura (Latino Literature Prize) in 2005. This Selected shows the full range of his work, but begins with his astonishing erotic long poem 'Tu Mano Mi Boca' (Your Hand, My Mouth), which was so well received in Ruth Fainlight's translation when it was included in her latest collection of poems.

The author explores the relationship between artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his muse, Suzanne Mallouk. Basquiat was courted, exploited and subsequently discarded by the art establishment. Mallouk survived whilst Basquiat died from heroin abuse.

'Now we make you ugly,' my mother said. 'The best thing you can be in Mexico is an ugly girl.' On the mountainside in rural Mexico where Ladydi lives, being a girl is dangerous. Especially a pretty one. If the Narcos hear there is a pretty girl on the mountain, they steal her. So when the black SUVs roll into town, Ladydi and her friends hide in the warren of holes scattered across the mountain, safely out of sight. Because the stolen girls don't come back. Ladydi is determined to get out, to find a life that offers more than just the struggle to survive. But she soon finds that the drug...

There were stray people, stray dogs, stray bullets, and stray butterflies.'Fourteen-year-old Pearl France lives in the front seat of a broken down car and her mother Margot lives in the back.