American journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce is one of the most famous and fascinating figures in all of American literature. He led an adventurous and eventful life, beginning with his birth in a log cabin, to his time as a Civil War soldier, and followed by his career as an author and journalist, to finally his mysterious disappearance during the Mexican Revolution at age 71. Bierce is perhaps best known for his short stories about the American...

A series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection.

Recounts how the American dream has been dismantled over the past forty years by legislative, electoral, and corporate decisions that have compromised the middle class and minimized individual economic and political power.

"Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington's poetic and funny world of motherhood, womanhood, and humanhood--not necessarily in that order. It's a place of loud parenting, fierce loving, too much social media, and occasional inner monologues where timeless debates are resolved such as Pro/Con: Caving to PTO Bake Sale Pressure ("PRO: Skim the crappiest brownies for myself. CON: They're really crappy."). With accessibility and wit, she captures the emotions...

A collection of articles and excerpts from Barbara Ehrenreich's long-ranging career that highlight her social consciousness and wry wit.

In early 1925, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher--recent mother of twins--resumes her journalistic career by agreeing to write a piece about the Tower of London--the Bloody Tower--for an American magazine. Invited to observe the centuries-old ritual Ceremony of the Keys, she's spending the night (her first time away from her babies) since the complex is locked and guarded, and the high walls are surrounded by a disused moat. Having been given...

On a dark, damp Sunday evening, a man taking a shortcut home sees a hand reaching out in supplication from a bundle of sacks. In an instant he knows something terrifying has happened. In the Highlands in the late 1950s, much of the local newspaper's success was due to Mrs. Smart, the no-nonsense office manager who kept everything and everyone in line. Her murder leaves her colleagues in shock and the Highland Gazette office in chaos. Joanne Ross,...

"When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. ...The riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder...

"Two violent suicides leave Coroner Martha Gunn with some disturbing questions to answer - but the most difficult one of all lies closer to home . . . Gina Marconi was a beautiful young barrister with everything to live for - a loving fianc©♭, a young son and a successful career. So why did she leave her home in the middle of the night and drive her car into a stone wall? Soon afterwards, Patrick Elson, a clever twelve-year-old schoolboy, jumps...