Chameleon

In 2018, Michael Avenatti seemed to appear out of nowhere. A brash, flashy lawyer riding shotgun with the porn star Stormy Daniels as her allegations against Donald Trump exploded into a national scandal. Avenatti was everywhere and was even — briefly — considered to be a presidential contender. Then the mask slipped to reveal a man clinging to his own myth.

When Esther was a teenager, her parents supported her in joining a group that promised to help her with her drug problem. She found a world of secret rituals, forced confessions, endless meetings — and a community that for a while at least, seemed to be exactly what she felt she had been missing her whole life.

Steffen Baldwin was a tattooed dog whisperer with an apparent gift for rehabilitating dangerous animals. He was a beloved local celebrity with a reputation for saving the most difficult dogs from being put down. But after one pit bull named Remy vanished, a determined owner, a vet and a local detective began to piece together a pattern of deception that revealed a far more sinister character than anyone ever suspected.

Jacob Kingston wanted money, status and the approval of his family. Then he met a charismatic Armenian oil tycoon called The Lion. What began with a deal over a shipment of stranded biofuel turned into a sprawling billion dollar scam where religious extremism, organized crime and green-energy policy collide.

When Mike Shannon was nine years old, he was told that his father had died fighting the Germans at the Battle of El Alamein. Michael’s father hadn’t died at all. He’d been a successful novelist and, quite possibly, a spy. We follow one journalist down a rabbit hole into the astonishing hidden lives of Alexander Wilson.