A writer becomes a carrier for the United States Postal Service out of a long-held love for the mail. What she discovers are screams, threats, lies, labor violations, and dog attacks. By Jess Stoner.

For a writer, a foreign language is a new kind of adventure. By Jhumpa Lahir.

Before Jennifer Mascia became one of journalism’s few full-time gun-policy reporters, she made a chilling discovery about her father’s past.

Every four years the political parties describe the impending presidential election as a historic event – and every once in a while it's true. By Sean Wilentz.

Inside the viral story of Gravity CEO Dan Price. By Karen Weise.

He has traveled so far, from near-fatal abuse to here, invisible among Maine’s poorest, in the care of grandparents who have little left to give but love - and just enough of that. Yet somehow Strider is climbing. How high? How far? By Sarah Schweitzer.

The Indians who first feasted with the English colonists were far more sophisticated than you were taught in school. But that wasn't enough to save them. By Charles C. Mann. (2005)

McDavid served nine years in prison before prosecutors finally disclosed key evidence suggesting the informant had enticed him with the prospect of romance. By Trevor Aaronson and Katie Galloway.

He stood naked by the roadside with a blanket draped around his hips, feebly reaching out for the glimmering cars as they passed in the morning light. He was almost too hideous to look at... By Michael Mason, Chris Sandel and Lee Roy Chapman. (2013)

Welcome back to Behind Closed Ovens, where we take a look at the best and strangest stories from inside the food industry. This week, we bring you the best BCO submissions of 2015. As always, these are real e-mails from real readers.

When a black South African student threw a bucket of excrement over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, it kicked off a protest movement that is shattering the way the country sees its past. By Eve Fairbanks.

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 unbelievable, —unless you believe in ghosts. By Tim Zimmermann. (2005)

How a con-artist father and treason in MI6 created the bard of the Cold War. By James Parker.

Any Southerner with a drawl or a twang in the voice is subject to derision, particularly when we venture outside our region. Folks hear the accent and the conclusions come quickly, even if they’re unspoken: We’re stupid. We’re slow. We’re backward. That’s why the work of N.C. State professor Walt Wolfram matters so much. He’s made it his mission to preserve the languages and dialects of the South. Today, writer Laura Relyea presents a great celebration and fierce defense of our twangs.

The Story Of A Modern-Day Lynching. By Albert Samaha.

In search of the mother who gave her up for adoption, the author finds six siblings instead. Decades later, she contemplates the drug addiction that cost many of them their lives. By Michele Leavitt.

On January 25, 1983, my father and twenty-one of his friends were led onto a snowy soccer pitch in Amol. There, the Iranian government executed them. By Neda Semnani.

When Alexander Chee was a struggling young writer, working as a cater-waiter for William F. and Pat Buckley.

’It is what happens in a place where revenge is the only justice.’ Adam Nicolson investigates murder over land rivalries in rural Romania.

Why are so many kids with bright prospects killing themselves in Palo Alto? By Hannah Rosin.