Inside a plot to influence American elections, starting with one small-town race.

Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his debut thriller, The Woman in the Window. His life contains even stranger twists.

An African-American-owned restaurant began making the spicy dish eighty years ago. Now it’s a viral sensation. Who’s getting the big money?

Why one physician took the risk of becoming an F.B.I. informant to expose alleged Medicare fraud.

The Booker Prize-winning novelist on fantasy, reality, and a religious crisis that has never ended.

On a Presidential paper trail.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s new movie, inspired by Gerhard Richter, blurs the line between fiction and biography. Richter says that it goes too far.

A profile of the climber and thief Vjeran Tomic, dubbed Spider-Man by the French press, who describes robbery as an act of imagination.

Elizabeth Anderson thinks we’ve misunderstood the basis of a free and fair society.

With “The Apprentice,” the TV producer mythologized Trump—then a floundering D-lister—as the ultimate titan, paving his way to the Presidency.

A profile of Marlon Brando, 33, holed up in a hotel suite in Kyoto where he was filming Sayonara.

How John, a father of 14, lost Christmas.

The corruption and cruelty of the state’s response to suspected jihadis and their families seem likely to lead to the resurgence of the terror group.

A profile of Edna Buchanan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald during its heyday.

A profile of Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

On the friendship that made Google huge.

Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?

A 1993 profile of Ricky Jay, world-class sleight-of-hand conjurer who rarely performs (and never for children), historian of unusual entertainments and confidence scams, bibliomaniac.

With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable.

A giant earthquake is coming to the Northwest. Unfortunately, no one knows when.

Searching for answers after unexplained brain injuries afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies.

Why doctors hate their computers.

On incarcerated mothers and their decimated families.

How chronic fatigue syndrome changed the author’s life.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney reinvents the role of the modern prosecutor.