Thin Mountain Air
How pitching phenom Steve Carlton became a yoga-loving conspiracy theorist who calls a concrete bunker his home.
Miami Cold Case Murder Solved With Recovered Memories
Two sisters help detectives solve a decades-old cold case by identifying their father as their mother’s killer.
The Missionary Movement to 'Save' Black Babies
How a network of evangelical Christian crisis pregnancy centers turned the complex reality behind black abortion rates into a single, fictional story.
Vanessa Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and New York.
On the art of the celebrity interview: "People are smart. Particularly these people. They're sitting there thinking, 'When is she going to drop that question?' They know what you're doing. So the way I think about it is: let's have an actual, genuine, human, interesting conversation. ... [Journalists] have all sorts of schemes of what they think works for them. My scheme is no scheme."
Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Audible!
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The Adventures of Super Boy
An early profile of Justin Beiber.
Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?
An endangered-species murder mystery in Hawaii.
Is She for Real?
On a cruise with Syvlia Browne, the controversial psychic famous for telling distraught parents where their missing children are.
Lip Shtick
Adventures in the cosmetics department of a Neiman Marcus in Dallas.
Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship
The filmmaker on his relationship with former Manson Family member, currently serving a life sentence for murder. An excerpt from Role Models.
Love and Madness in the Jungle
A financier and his wife build a mansion in the jungles of Costa Rica, set up a wildlife preserve, and appear to slowly, steadily lose their minds. A spiral of handguns, angry locals, armed guards, uncut diamonds, abduction plots, and a bedroom blazing with 550 Tiffany lamps ends with a body and a mystery: Did John Felix Bender die by his own hand? Or did Ann Bender kill him to escape their crumbling dream?
My Father, the Good Nazi
Horst von Wächter confronts - and rationalizes - a difficult family legacy.
What Do You Desire?
The writer, entering her thirties single and adrift, heads to San Francisco to spend time with Kink.com’s Princess Donna Dolore and attend a gangbang “where all the men were dressed as panda bears.”
The Thin Red Line
Inside the White House debate over Syria.
The Luckiest Village in the World
In 2011, just before Christmas, a tiny Spanish town won 120 million Euros in the lottery. A trip to the new Sodeto.
Al Gore’s Golden Years
A profile of the almost-president.
Taken for a Ride: Temp Agencies and Raiteros in Immigrant Chicago
How companies and large temp agencies benefit from—and tacitly collaborate with—an underworld of labor brokers, known as “raiteros,” who charge workers fees, pushing their pay below minimum wage.
Death of a Building
A historic Little Rock building and its owner, before and after a catastrophic fire.
Hard Knocks: Shanghai
The NFL attempts to set up a beachhead in China.
The Biggest Week in Bourbontown
An 8th-generation Louisvillian on the Kentucky Derby, bourbon and the history of his hometown.
James Baldwin: The Art of Fiction No. 78
“No one works better out of anguish at all; that’s an incredible literary conceit.”
New on Longform Fiction
Every weekday, our editors recommend one short story from across the web on Longform Fiction. Three picks from this week:
Mexican Manifesto
Roberto Bolaño • New Yorker
A series of mysterious, dangerous interactions in a Mexican bathhouse.
Babushka
Sarah Gentile • Vol. 1 Brooklyn
A baby born in New Jersey grows and takes on the characteristics of a headstrong Russian woman.
Stan's Report
Glen Pourciau • AGNI
Tension between two co-workers turns into a complicated game of lies and intentions.
Find more stories on Longform Fiction or delivered directly in the Longform App.
Deep Inside Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco
Creation of a fast food phenomenon.
Escape
Meet Krystal Ryan. She left her abusive husband.
2013 National Magazine Awards Winners
Trasmissions from Camp Trans
The author visits Camp Trans, an annual protest organized after the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival evicted a transsexual woman.
