The virus rode inside the salivary glands of the mosquito as the insect flew crosswind over northeast Los Angeles in search of a blood meal. It was looking for a bird — a finch, sparrow or robin, the preferred targets — and it found Missy Morris.

This is a story of stories — specifically, three stories about the same individual (or group of individuals, depending on which story you choose to believe). In the first story, a lone writer looking to carve out a niche in the internet decides to satirize the untidy, anything-goes state of self-published erotica.

The 11-year-old boy North Dakota, who was adopted at birth , spent all summer earning money to buy a gravestone for the biological father he never met. It all began in January, when Brandon began asking Brandy Bakke, Brandon’s adoptive mother,questions about his biological family. Brandy knew Brandon’s biological father’s name was Terrence, though they’d like to keep his last name anonymous. The two began searching for him on Facebook,but couldn’t find any clue .

An 89-year-old paleta vendor in Little Village who returned to work after his daughter died in order to earn a living and support his grandchildren was received more than $380,000 from a record-setting GoFundMe campaign.

In midcentury Appalachia, an intrepid doctor sold newborns to desperate couples. Today they’re all grown up, and seeking answers... On a humid August day in the small mountain town of McCaysville, Georgia, Sandy Dearth stands in front of the building where, 53 years ago, a nurse secretly and illegally handed her out a back window to a pair of eager and nervous adoptive parents. Sandy, who has not been back here since that day in 1963, is holding her husband Bill’s hand tightly. A lifetime of searching has led her to this moment.

It’s not every day that researchers crack a case this cold. Lucy, the iconic hominin found in present-day Ethiopia, died 3.18 million years ago. Her cause of death has remained a mystery since her remains were first discovered in 1974.

On December 19, 2013, after a groundbreaking ACLU report that detailed the harsh realities for inmates sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent offenses, President Barack Obama granted clemency to eight federal inmates now known as “Obama’s Eight.” The group was the first wave of inmates to have their sentences commuted by Obama. Jason Hernandez was one of them. Hernandez was once a prominent crack dealer from McKinney. He started out on the street corners of East McKinney at the age of fifteen, learning from his brother J.J., whose escalating crack addiction would propel Hernandez deeper into the drug game.

Aug. 26, 2011, an ordinary day. I was driving to work on the same road in Lahore that I took every day, and my mind was busy with the mundane. A car blocked the road, but I didn’t give it much thought. Then five masked men put a gun to my head, pulled me out of the car and my world spun horribly out of control. Right now, I can’t tell all of the details of my capture or my release for security reasons. Someday I hope to be able to recount the full story. But I can...

MAR 23, 2015 - Scheduled to be unveiled in May in Bailic Park in Middleton, Cork County, Ireland.,

Sgt. Greg Bogert is an 18-year veteran of the Riverdale Police Department

Chino hits the ground. He was led to the edge of the wall by two polleros. The smugglers helped him jump. But they wouldn’t be joining him on the other side. “You have a phone?” the polleros had asked when they picked him up earlier that day. “Yes, I have a phone,” he told them. “Look, this is really easy,” one of them explained. “You have to jump and run. You are going to see some houses at the end, you have to run toward the houses.”

One morning in the fall of 1980, Rex Shaddox got a call from his supervisor at the Uvalde, Texas, office of Animal Damage Control. Shaddox had worked for Animal Damage Control, which was then a branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for seventeen months. His job was to trap and kill wild carnivores, coyotes in particular, that were said to prey on the flocks of local sheep ranchers.

I was supposed to be executed one minute after midnight on February 10, 2004. In the lead up to that day, I was moved to a new cell where prison guards could check in on me every hour to “make sure I was all right.” The prison also started sending a psychiatrist — it was clear that they wanted to make sure I was not going to commit suicide. This went on for a few days, and then things slowly started to get more intense. I was awakened in the middle of the night...

I have always hated internet trolls. I’m one of those people that gets really riled up over stupid internet comments and can’t help but respond. Whenever I’ve imagined these trolls, I’ve always envisioned balding, middle-aged men sitting in their mom’s basement and snickering as they stir up trouble on the random websites. Or maybe skinny, teenagers and/or college students with acne busting out all over their forehead, patting themselves...

At the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world, diving deeper than almost anyone had ever gone, Dave Shaw found the body of a young man who had disappeared ten years earlier. What happened after Shaw promised to go back is nearly unbelievableunless you believe in ghosts. Ten minutes into his dive, Dave Shaw started to look for the bottom. Utter blackness pressed in on him from all sides, and he directed his high-intensity light...

Stephen Sluyter was lounging on his leather couch, taking bong hits and watching the Cartoon Network, when his phone rang. "Bro, you hungry?" his best friend and roommate Max Bocanegra asked on the other end of the line. "I got some beans for you. I need you to get them right now." Sluyter was a 28-year-old graduate student at Texas A&M – Corpus Christi, and founder of its Kappa Sigma fraternity chapter, famous for the slip-and-slide parties and oil-wrestling events...

It's muggy and I'm confused. I don't understand where I am, though it was only a short walk from my Airbnb studio to this little curry place. I don’t understand the lunch menu, or even if it is a lunch menu. Could be a religious tract or a laminated ransom note. I’m new in Tokyo, and sweaty, and jet-lagged. But I am entirely at ease. I owe this to my friend Miyabi. She’s one of those reassuring presences, warm and eternally nodding...

When my family’s fortune suddenly went kaput, I discovered a talent for convincing unsuspecting saps that I can read the future. But when they started telling me their darkest fears, I was the one who got scared out of my mind.

Debi Thomas, the best African American figure skater in the history of the sport, couldn’t find her figure skates. She looked around the darkened trailer, perched along a river in a town so broke even the bars have closed, and sighed. The mobile home where she lives with her fiance and his two young boys was cluttered with dishes, stacks of documents, a Christmas tree still standing weeks past the holiday.

One day a year, the men locked up in California's oldest prison get a shot at glory. Thieves, killers, and dope dealers lace up their shoes and race around the yard for the longest and hardest run of their lives. It's The San Quentin Marathon, and it feels something like freedom