Great Reads

Sal Perricone always had something to prove. Growing up poor and Italian in a city dominated by Creoles and Anglos, Perricone found respect on the streets after high school by becoming a cop. He pulled graveyard shifts to put himself through college and eventually took night classes to earn...

The Chinese engineers passed by Antonio Cardenas' dusty plot of land the other day. They didn't say anything to him. They never do.

The pastor walked the streets of Lower Manhattan, his hands trembling. A day earlier, he'd been stripped of his ministry, defrocked by the United Methodist Church for presiding over his gay son's wedding. He was afraid he'd never lead a church again.

At first blush, Zhang Wei hardly seems like the kind of guy who cares about the social justice issues of the factory floor.

Henry Kornman's window looks like one at a ticket office, with a metal grille to speak through and an opening for papers to be passed. People jot down their names with a pencil affixed to a plastic spoon and patiently wait to be summoned.

On a cluttered card table at a Westside estate sale, Sandy Marks spotted an antique silver trophy. It was a large bowl, so deeply tarnished that she struggled to read the inscription:

Groceryships is about healthful food, but for participants, the conversation goes much further: 'This class has helped me put my fears up front and look at them.'

Ildiko Tabori has never stood on a stage trying to make strangers laugh, doesn't write jokes and admits that she's not great at telling them. Trying to recount something clever she heard, she makes advance apologies: "I'm not going to do it justice."

Transients hole up in the old cottage resorts where vacationing families once came to fish and swim. Rotted docks and pier pilings litter the lake's shoreline.

L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina shows her fabric-loving softer side at the East Los Angeles Stitchers, which she and friends founded to share their love of quilting and bring more Latinas into its sisterhood.

Angela Boyd bounced on the balls of her feet as the smell of sizzling meat pierced the ocean breeze. The 19-year-old and her friends were about to celebrate her birthday in Isla Vista, but they were making a pit stop at the Jesus Burgers house.

A short walk from the fast-food drive-throughs, taco joints and doughnut shops lining Hawaiian Gardens' palm-tree-dotted main drag, a classroom of energetic kindergartners begins a well-rehearsed routine.

On a summer's day in the park, children gripped Frisbees and ice cream cones as they tottered next to distracted parents. A wedding party simulated a conga line for a patient cameraman. A trio of twentysomething men sipped kvass, a favorite only-looks-like-beer beverage.

The rookie arrived at Lakers training camp with something to prove.

Every Thursday morning, Judith Sydner-Gordon puts on the same simple uniform: khaki cargo pants and an electric orange T-shirt with a saber-toothed cat emblazoned across the front. Recently, she added an accessory, a miniature canine skull that dangles from a silver chain around her neck.

Inside an air-conditioned hangar in the Sonoran Desert, a man in a red and black kilt sat in the shadow of a Supermarine Spitfire and painted.

Lat Ware pauses to straighten his jacket and organize his chaotic mind. For Ware, who has attention deficit disorder, standing in the halls of a gaming conference as people rush by can feel like being in a hurricane of humanity.

Minutes after the barrel bomb eviscerated the crowded market, those still alive had to contend with matters of survival — and collecting what little remained of the dead.

Ronda Spinak squeezed more folding chairs into a Brentwood living room, which that afternoon had been transformed, with much shuffling of couches and tables, into a temporary theater.

It is near midnight. The Ramadan prayers have just been said, the congregants have paid respect to Allah and headed home. Only the gray-haired imam and his wife remain at the little house of faith they have devoted their lives to.

Claire Evans is on a mission: to get you to love L.A. She's come up with a jam-packed itinerary to show off the not-always-obvious magic of this sprawling, jumbled-up city — a hidden garden built as a labor of love by an Iranian immigrant, a taco stand that may or may not be able...

Norman Starks, the anti-hero of Owens Valley, greeted a stranger at his door with something like a defiant haiku.

In a small, utilitarian office in Glendale, Ron Henderson methodically jotted down equations for Isaac Newton's Three Laws of Motion on a whiteboard next to his desk.

Auguste is 3 years old, a charmer with big blue eyes, long lashes and a playful smile. He's wearing a T-shirt that says "Make some noise" and fiddling with his Etch A Sketch in a hospital exam room.

Alfonso Hernandez stands before a mural of Jesus Christ being ferried on a lion-drawn carriage, trailed by Catholic bishops and priests. Behind them, scores of men in crisp suits — some smiling, some somber, one in dark shades — kneel as they watch the procession.

The old poet is dressed in black, his platinum-blond hair rakishly moussed. He stands amid the hubbub, facing a stern test of his crafted words and carnival-barker delivery.

At night he dreams of the sea.

"Run for cover, everybody; get the hell out of here, on the double!" the leader of the commando unit shouted over his shoulder to the men behind him, his voice echoing eerily in the pitch-black basement. "It is a booby-trap. Watch your step for more wires as you go!"

In the photographs, Lester Wisbrod is a constant: He always appears on the right, with a big smile and a satisfied look about him. On the left, a cavalcade of famous faces flashes by: Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Aniston, Charlton Heston, Renee Zellweger.

On a sunny day in the Burbank hills, Jay Leno's canary yellow McLaren supercar shatters the silence.

In a city with about 30,000 Chinese residents, Alhambra police leaders hope Weibo, the world's largest social network, will help improve the police-community relationship.

Megan Gaynes noticed the horse when she pulled up to the auction in Mira Loma. He was standing in a pen, his head down, his right hind leg swollen.

Julie Shemitz watched warily as the judge asked prospective jurors whether they or anyone close to them had a card for medical marijuana.