In our age of trigger warnings and jeopardized free expression, The Best American Essays 2014 does not shy away from shocking extremes, ambiguities, or dualities. As guest editor John Jeremiah Sullivan notes, the essay assumes many two-sided forms, and these diverse pieces capture all the conceptions of what an essay can be: the loose and the strict, the flourish and the finished, the try and the trial. Sullivan's choices embrace the high and the...

CHINA' S SEAMY UNDERSIDEKitty and her teenage friends, squatting in an empty apartment, are looking for gas to cook instant noodles. Bai Song and his wife, who live in the unit across the hallway, have a well-equipped kitchen with all the mod cons. Plus they' re old and retired, meaning they' re ripe for a bit of rough fun, Clockwork Orange-style.China at the turn of the century. Everything is upside down. Respect...

"Wonderful and dark... a journey into the minds of two men who together become one killer" from true crime author (Blaine L. Pardoe, author of A Special Kind of Evil). In April 1997, pretty, 22-year-old Jacine Gielinski stopped her car at a red light in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She had no idea that the two young men looking at her from the car next to hers would in that moment decide she would be their target for unspeakable horrors. George Woldt...

A cyborg and her pirate lover travel through a violent Paris in this "apocalyptic tale that makes A Clockwork Orange look tame" (Publishers Weekly). Originally published in 1988, Empire of the Senseless marked a turning point in Acker's wild, inimitable style. Considered one of her more accessible works, here Acker candidly addresses her lifelong obsessions: childhood and trauma, language and sexuality, criminality and corruption, oppression and...

This immersive biography of the legendary director of films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and A Clockwork Orange is based on new research and interviews with family members and those who worked with him.