A portrait of a toxic workplace.

How a once idyllic postwar town fell under the sway of a teen-age gang.

A former schoolyard bully finds a new identity through Buddhism. A classmate wonders why he changed—and if he remembers the pain he caused.

An inventive spoof on childhood mystery novels.

"Almanac's father fell face forward onto the concrete garage floor, dead, blood pooling beneath him, and ending Almanac's childhood right then and there."

Horror--physical and psychological--grips a cockroach-infested Navy ship.

"I reached down and slapped his hands, sent his pals flying. The roaches were scuttling around, I was trying to step on them, when Thurman’s foot shot out. His toe-claw speared me in the leg between my calf and shinbone. I fell to one knee, gripping the wound. Thurman stood up and started shouting at me.

A student navigates the treacherous world of isolation and bullying.

"But you just can’t, that’s all. It’s the one thing you have no talent for: being a little bit brave. You think you could be very brave, if the need arose, and if you had to slay a dragon or fight a Sith Lord. But enduring Paul Boehler’s wedgies and Marvin Grossman’s under-the-breath-threats? It’s too much psychic trouble for so small a reward. You cannot do it. And so you’ll stay here for third period, lunch, too. There is no one to eat with in the cafeteria, no place to sit without feeling alone, and so you eat in the nurse’s office and pretend that you are her assistant. She never really seems to mind, though she sighs a little whenever she looks in your direction."

How one man terrorized a small Illinois town.

Her suicide made headlines around the world after classmates were indicted on felony charges related to bullying. The real story isn’t that simple.