Gina Welch goes undercover into the land of believers in this honest and fair-minded chronicle of the two years she spent attending an evangelical megachurch in Virginia among Christian conservatives.

When the FBI arrested five-year-old Jennifer Mascia's father in 1983, a family friend soothed her. "It's not real," he purred. "They're making a movie."

Today, tattoos on women are about as rare as birthmarks, but once upon a time, being inky was considered kinky. In this artful book, Osterud explores how, beginning in 1882, a few brave ladies bared (almost) all for their tattooists and then showed off their body art in sideshows.

Punk-rock poet Patti Smith's life story could probably fill a Proustian number of volumes. But in this slim, richly realized memoir, she focuses on 1967 to 1989--the years that spanned her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, before his life was cut short by AIDS.

The third annual edition of Best Sex Writing, edited by notable sex expert Rachel Kramer Bussel, bills itself as a thinking persons sex book.