A seven-day cruise with the controversial “downtrodden millionaire.”

An investigation into the disappearance of a 24-year-old British cruise ship activity director from the Disney Wonder opens the strange and insular world of cruise employees, who vanish mysteriously at alarming rates.

After losing a presidential election, 600 National Review subscribers hit the Caribbean.

The sinking of the Costa Concordia.

On board the Perl Whirl 2000, a conference of hard-coding geeks on a luxury cruise ship.

The Estonia was carrying 989 passengers when it sank in 30-foot seas on its way across the Baltic in September 1994. More than 850 perish.

Two thousand rednecks on the Chillin’ the Most Cruise.

A profile of Jordan at 50.

The girlfriend who wasn’t and everyone who bought it.

Bobby Riggs, the mob and “The Battle of the Sexes.”

The life and sudden death of NASCAR’s Dick Trickle.

How sports channels extort cable subscribers.

A series of mysterious, dangerous interactions in a bathhouse.

A series of linked fantasies, veering from the whimsical to the grave.

The appearance of a “mole man” reflects the past and realities of a hardscrabble town.

A party game drives a woman to reflect upon a history of manipulation.

Greek heroes and gods roam suburban America.

From 1976 to 1986, one of the most violent serial criminals in American history terrorized communities throughout California. He was little known, never caught, and might still be out there. The author, along with several others, can’t stop working on the case.

William Sparkman Jr., a census worker, was found hanging from a tree in rural Kentucky. He was naked, hands bound, with the letters “FED” written across his chest. Inside the investigation into how—and why—he died.

After a botched bank robbery in 1990, Sture Bergwall, aka Thomas Quick, confessed to a string of brutal crimes. He admitted to stabbings, stranglings, incest and cannibalism. He was convicted of eight murders in all, and after the final trial he went silent for nearly a decade. But a few years ago, Bergwall came forward again—there was one more secret he had to tell.

How a killer and his teenage accomplice used listings for “the job of a lifetime” to lure their victims, all down-and-out single men, to the backwoods of Ohio.

The haunted past of Amy Bishop, a University of Alabama neurobiologist who shot six colleagues during a staff meeting.

In a Plano bowling alley one night, Bill Fong came so close to perfection that it nearly killed him.

The strange case of Kip Litton, road race fraud.

The story of a high school star who died minutes after hitting a game-winner to end an undefeated season, and the family and friends he left behind.

A youth wasted on pro-level Ultimate Frisbee.

In Argentina, where the fútbol underworld controls everything from t-shirt vending to murder, and “rowdy gangs” have turned the stadium into a battleground.

How a Mexican drug cartel makes its billions.

How the U.S. lost out on iPhone work.

How a loathsome band makes gobs of money.

Reporting undercover from inside the online-shipping industry.

Frank Firetti, a 54-year-old pool salesman in Virginia, and his fading American dream.