Longform

Today we're thrilled to announce our first Longform App Exclusive! One of the best articles of 2014 is now available completely free, only in the Longform App.

In "The Trials of White Boy Rick," a Kindle Single bestseller, Evan Hughes tells the incredible story of Rick Wershe. An infamous teenage drug dealer in 1980s Detroit who flew in kilos of cocaine from Miami and drove a white Jeep with THE SNOWMAN emblazoned on the back, Wershe was arrested at 17 and remains incarcerated. But he now claims he was working with the FBI all along. Was one of Detroit’s most notorious criminals also one of the feds’ most valuable informants?

Everyone at Longform has read this story and we can say with complete confidence: you'll love it. It's a frontrunner for our Best of 2014 list, an epic tale you can't put down. We'll be bringing you many more Longform App Exclusives, but we couldn't have started with a better pick. And it's 100% totally free, only in the Longform App.

Download the app today.

The mystery of a death in Dallas.

In Goiânia, a city of 1.3 million in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, one in twenty homeless residents have been murdered in the last two years.

On cattle auctions, reality TV and coming of age during the Great Recession.

An American journalist on being kidnapped, tortured and released in Syria.

What do you do when you think a family member is a murderer? Step one: stop eating her food.

On spear-wielding chimps who hunt for meat.

The story of Frank Bourassa, the world’s most prolific counterfeiter.

Margaret Keane’s husband stole credit for her iconic paintings, basking in fame and fortune that should have been hers for years. Then she told a reporter the truth.

He has a staff of 300. His website gets more traffic than Gawker and has 300,000 paying subscribers. He has a clothing line, a string of bestselling books, a movie studio and a radio show syndicated on 400 stations. A profile of Glenn Beck, mogul.

Magicians, mafiosos, a missing painting and the heist of a lifetime.

“We, the writers—a word I am using in its most primitive sense—arrived in Chicago about 10 days before the baffling, bruising, an unbelievable two minutes and six seconds at Comiskey Park. We will get to all that later.”

Scrutinizing the gluten-free craze.

A grandmother tells her story.

Javier Flores had hopes of a last-minute change in policy that would allow him to stay in Ohio with his wife and four kids, where he had a good job, a house, paid taxes. It didn’t come.

Those who survived tell the story of twenty three ISIS hostages’ shared months of brutal captivity before some were ransomed and some executed.

Kelli Stapleton, whose teenage daughter was autistic and prone to violent rages, had come to fear for her life. So she made a decision that perhaps only she could justify.

The misadventures of two hospital workers.

Walking the East Tennessee woods with a Carol, aka “The Forest Granny,” a woman who lives off the land.

Monaco’s richest woman was shot in ambush outside a hospital. Her heirs stand to inherit over a billion dollars each.

An epilogue to Serpico.

On the origin of the essay.