The story of dog-scent lineup innovator Keith Pikett and the not-so-scientific science behind forensics.

An investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in Alaska Native villages.

For 18 months, Coatesville, Penn., was besieged with an improbable number of arsons.  But who started the fires – and why?

A profile of Larry Garrison, the man who “gets paid to bring tabloid stories to TV news programs.”

The story of the 1969 murder spree by Charles Manson and “Family” as told by those close to the case.

The story of a high school quarterback’s descent into madness, and its tragic end.

A letter to his unborn son about the wonders of being an only child.

The author gets a security guard job at this aging textile factory. Part of the City by City project.

A profile of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar during the 2004 Cannes International Film Festival.

A profile of 17-year-old Teresa Scanlan, the newly crowned Miss America.

How Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the Dodgers for “for less than the price of an oceanfront home in Southampton” and eventually became entangled in one of the most expensive divorces in California history, which laid bare their finances and confirmed what many already knew: they had bankrupted one of the most storied franchises in baseball.

In all, the McCourts reportedly took $108 million out of the team in personal distributions over five years—a sum that Molly Knight, a reporter with ESPN who has extensively covered the story, notes is eerily similar to the cash payment that she says Frank McCourt has claimed he made for the team.

What are the foreign policy views of Michele Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney?

By 2006, S&P was making its own study of such loans' performance. It singled out 639,981 loans made in 2002 to see if its benign assumptions had held up. They hadn't. Loans with piggybacks were 43% more likely to default than other loans, S&P found. In April 2006, S&P said it would raise by July the amount of collateral underwriters must include in many new mortgage portfolios. For instance, S&P could require that mortgage pools have extra loans in them, since it now expected a larger number to go bad. Still, S&P didn't lower its ratings on existing securities, saying it had to further monitor the performance of loans backing them. It thus helped the market for these loans hold up through the end of 2006.

On Sam Jain and Daniel Sundin, the fugitive kings of scareware.

On the tangled early careers of Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Mary Karr and Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Starbucks-fueled saga of how Jim Romenesko, beloved journalism blogger, took an early retirement.

After the United States demanded the extradition of a drug lord, a bloodletting ensued.

A step-by-step proposal for fixing the broken economics of big-time college sports.

Con man turned pastor turned con man; a profile of a serial scammer and the movie he tried to make about himself.

A reporter makes it his mission to track down all 42 members of a platoon after their service in Iraq.

In Michele Bachmann’s home district evangelicals have pushed anti-gay policies to the school board. After a rash of suicides, teens are fighting back.

Pavel Galitsky, 100 years old, blogger and Skyper, survivor of 15 years in Stalin’s Siberian Kolyma mines.

“In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.”

A newspaper writer’s attempt to solve the mystery of a homeless man who claims to be a once-famous boxer.