The dark secret life of The Great Zucchini, Washington D.C.’s most sought after children’s birthday party entertainer.

A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.

Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?

Forgetting a child in the backseat of a car is a horrifying mistake. But is it a crime?

Eleven years ago, three-year-old Audrey Santo fell into a pool. She nearly drowned. Much of her brain died. She cannot speak, can only barely move. And every Wednesday, pilgrims show up at her family’s house, ready for a miracle.

Analysis of the divisive murder case.

More than forty years later, tracking down an elementary school crush.

Chains, knives, fists, and, of course, those crude and unreliable homemade affairs called zip guns were the staples in the more vicious gang wars in the 1940s and 1950s. Today there is scarcely a gang in the Bronx that cannot muster a factory-made piece for every member—at the very least, a .22-caliber pistol, but quite often heavier stuff: .32s, .38s, and .45s, shotguns, rifles, and—I have seen them myself—even machine guns, grenades, and gelignite, an explosive. One gang, the Royal Javelins, has acquired some walkie-talkie radios.

A search for the “armpit of America” ends in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

On writing what you loathe. Leslie McFarlane, ghostwriter of the early Hardy Boys novels, was so ashamed of the work he couldn’t even bring himself to name the books in his diary. “June 9, 1933: Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me.”