Mike Pingel

Signing Stars

$19.99, paperback

Thirty years ago, three women combined beauty and cunning to capture not only the bad guy but the imagination of America as well. Who were these women? Why, Charlie’s Angels, of course. Each week, the Angels were given instructions from their never-seen boss, Charlie, and went deep undercover, assisted by the incomparable Bosley.

Über fan Mike Pingel has compiled the ultimate “Charlie’s Angels” book, Angelic Heaven, which is jam-packed with tidbits on the history of the beloved show, as well as episode guides for all six seasons. There are also two forewords, one by Farrah Fawcett and the other by Cheryl Ladd.

Angelic Heaven will have you reminiscing fondly about those gals at the Charles Townsend Agency, all the while letting you in on secrets about the show.

Pingel has been a guest on numerous talk shows discussing his Web site, www.charliesangels.com, and was enlisted for his expertise of all things “Angels” for the big-screen adaptation, and even auditioned for the role of Cameron Diaz’s boyfriend in the film.

Dave White

Alyson Books

$13.95, paperback

Dave White moved to West Hollywood in his “later years,” which for a gay man translates to anywhere older than 40. He was amazed at the percentages that made up his neighborhood: “queens: 6 percent; cranky 70-year-old Russians who give you the evil eye when you walk past: 2 percent; blonde girls with big, round, hard fakeys who think Jennifer Aniston just got lucky: 10 percent; miscellaneous cool kids, hustlers, and actual crazy people: 5 percent.”

Rather than try to fit in, White chronicled his experiences as a fish that doesn’t necessarily want to be in or out of the water. He has run-ins with the locals as well as actual celebrity sightings, like spotting Sara Gilbert (TV’s “Roseanne”) at the laundry mat and Ben Affleck “driving a Rolls-Royce so ridiculously conspicuous he might as well be driving Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang.”

What started out as weekly diary entries e-mailed back home to family and friends became a blog called “Dave White Knows All,” and then a monthly column for Instinct magazine called “Exile in Guyville,” and, of course, this book, which is the expanded version of his blogs, sparkling with both wit and venom.

White blogs for MSNBC and is a contributor to The Advocate, E! online, Instinct and Unzipped.

William Bast

Barricade Books

$24.95, hardcover

Many biographies have been written about that rebel without a cause, the iconic actor known as James Dean, and a good many of those books have touched on Dean’s “alleged” gay tendencies.

Author William Bast first met Dean in 1950 when he was a closeted homosexual. Bast quickly developed a crush on the intense actor, and recounts this in the book, along with Dean’s other dalliances with the same sex. The thrust of the book, however, is not Dean’s sexuality; it is the legendary actor’s staying power, as the book also chronicles Dean’s untimely death and the lasting impact his friendship has had on the author.

Bast has written for both film and television since the 1950s, and wrote another book on the subject of his friendship with Dean in 1956, entitled James Dean: A Biography.