The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
Fiction
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
What Does Lena Dunham Want to Tell Us?
Her new memoir captures the cost of being an impossibly popular target.
The Eighth Deadly Sin
Humankind has devised a new form of debasement.
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
These six books demand discussion—with a pal, a date, or a book club.
Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World
Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.
Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read
These titles are worth picking up, even if you have only a moment to spare.
Six Books You Can Get Lost In
These novels highlight the power—both good and bad—of unchecked fantasizing.
Reply to a Dead Man
"My heart started beating rapidly after the third time I read the letter. I could have sat there and guessed for a hundred years and never come up with what my brother had to say." A short story
Onward
Love happens, like age or weather. It’s not hard to do, only to endure, sometimes. A short story
Ice Man
He saw deputies in their serious hats coming through the restaurant from the kitchen, four white guys who looked like they meant business. A short story
Honors Track
“The exam went off without a hitch, and from there, stopping just didn’t make sense. Before each Calc test, we convened at Jill’s house to work out the answers.” A short story
The Case of George Dedlow
An absurdist short story about a Union doctor—which many Atlantic readers erroneously believed at the time to be nonfiction.
The Brothers
Set in a wartime hospital, a short story about a family with a poisonous secret
The Story of a Year
A young couple is parted by Civil War in an early short story by the 21-year-old Henry James
The Last Copy
As soon as his book was published, Antonio realized that the pure vision of him that only she harbored would be shattered— and that he would do anything to keep her from reading it.
Little Sister
Marla had felt she’d never really had a sister, that she’d been visited by some strange goblin or ghost. But then she went into Daddy’s bank vault after he died.
Vigil
The old Bohemian hadn’t come to disturb the family on Holy Night, only to deliver an enormous, misshapen gift.