'A gripping true crime mystery... a must-read' Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The End of the Myth'An essential book' Joe Jackson, author of The Thief at the End of the WorldDeep in the heart of the Amazon, a vast region lived for decades under the control of one notorious land baron: Joselio de Barros. Joselio arrived in the jungle with a shady past and quickly made a name for himself as an invincible strongman who grabbed huge tracts of public land, burned down the forest, expelled Indigenous tribes and kept migrant workers in conditions of modern-day slavery.Only the charismatic leader of a small farmworkers' union, Dezinho, and his wife, Maria Joel, a single mother of four young children, stood up for the people who called the Amazon home. Against great odds and at extreme personal risk, their crusade for justice unearthed a chilling world of corruption and lawlessness.Set against a backdrop of devastating environmental damage, Brazil's dizzying industrial development and the Amazon's crucial role in climate change, and based on four years of research, Masters of the Lost Land is a gripping murder mystery revealing the human story behind one of the most serious crimes of our time: the ruthless destruction of the largest rainforest on earth.