This piece is an excerpt from “Agent Zapata” by Mary Cuddehe. The full story is available from The Atavist for Kindle,  iPad/iPhone, and the Web. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were driving outside Santa María del Río, a small town in southern San Luis Potosí, when two SUVs sped past them down the highway. There were at least eight people inside the vehicles, and as they passed Avila saw that they were holding their guns in plain view. He had a good idea of who they were. Monterrey, 350 miles to the north, was a base of operations for the Zetas, a rogue paramilitary force that had split off from the Gulf drug cartel the year before and had since become the most feared criminal organization in Mexico. The Zetas had set themselves apart from the competition with their uncommon brutality, massacring migrants, detonating car bombs, and hurling grenades into crowds. Lately, they had moved into San

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were driving outside Santa María del Río, a small town in southern San Luis Potosí, when two SUVs sped past them down the highway. There were at least eight people inside the vehicles, and as they passed Avila saw that they were holding their guns in plain view. He had a good idea of who they were. Monterrey, 350 miles to the north, was a base of operations for the Zetas, a rogue paramilitary force that had split off from the Gulf drug cartel the year before and had since become the most feared criminal organization in Mexico. The Zetas had set themselves apart from the competition with their uncommon brutality, massacring migrants, detonating car bombs, and hurling grenades into crowds. Lately, they had moved into San Luis Potosí.The SUVs disappeared down the road. But soon they reappeared on the horizon, still traveling in the same direction but now moving very slowly and

Atavist No. 18, Angel Killer, is a true story of cannibalism, crime fighting, and insanity in early 20th century New York.Contact Information:Gray Beltran, gray@atavist.net, (718) 522-7871NEW YORK (October 23, 2012)In the mid-1920s, young children began to vanish from neighborhoods around New York City. Angel Killer is the story of Albert Fish, the man who took them. Pulitzer-Prize winner Deborah Blum brings his horrifying tale to life in an Atavist enhanced ebook that includes vintage recordings, film, and news clippings. The story is also available through Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble Nook, Kobo, Google Books, and the Atavist Webreader.Fish committed crimes of unspeakable horror: He not only abducted and murdered his victims, but also tortured and in some cases ate them. During Fish’s trial, some of the country’s most prominent psychiatrists debated the exact nature of his crimes. Was he evil or insane? Who had the power to determine where one ended and

On a May afternoon in 1995, an American named Alan Rosen made the five-hour drive from central Honduras to the mountain district of Olancho. Rosen, a sun-worn, middle-aged Floridian, had for years worked as a procurer of fruits for a juice company, traveling the country in search of its pitted treasures: purple mangosteens, spiky green durians, and hairy red rambutans. And despite Olancho’s unofficial motto, Entre si quiere, salga si puede-“Enter if you want, leave if you can”-he’d been to this violent but fruit-rich region many times. On this particular trip, however, Olancho’s exotic maracujas were not his concern. Rosen had come instead to meet with a former colonel from the twice-crumbled regime of military dictator Oswaldo Enrique López Arellano. The colonel was prepared to sell Rosen something considerably more exotic: a piece of the moon.The colonel had claimed, somewhat fantastically, to have been given the rock by President

 The Atavist Releases Stowaway, an Enhanced E-ComicAtavist No. 17, Stowaway, by Josh Neufeld and Tori Marlan, is an enhanced nonfiction e-comic that traces the 12,000-mile journey of an orphan from Ethiopia to America.Contact Information:Gray Beltran, gray@atavist.net, (718) 522-7871NEW YORK (September 18, 2012)Reporter Tori Marlan teams up with renowned cartoonist Josh Neufeld to tell the story of an Ethiopian boy’s daring 12,000-mile journey alone to America. Stowaway follows Fanuel on his odyssey from the streets of Addis Ababa to the deserts of Mexico through the Atavist’s immersive storytelling technology, which includes sound, video, and interactive graphics. Fifteen-year-old Fanuel dodges authorities while relying on complete strangers as he struggles to find a mysterious woman in Seattle named Sofia. This is the first Atavist story to be available for purchase on the Web. The full mulitmedia version of the story is available for the iPhone and iPad,