In 1994, Damien Echols and two of his friends, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were wrongfully convicted in what prosecutors called a satanic ritual murder of three 8-year-old boys. Echols, the leader of the group, was sentenced to death; Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences. The trio became known as the …

In 1991, Jerry Sandusky approached Kip Richeal, a former equipment manager with the Nittany Lions, and asked him to co-write a biographical book about the coach's life. Richeal, who'd known Sandusky since he was an 18-year-old freshman and who'd studied journalism at Penn State, agreed to the job. For a while, Sandusky …

Adapted from Tom Scocca's Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, available at your favorite bookseller.

The following is excerpted from Curtis's cover story in the May issue of Texas Monthly about the Rangers — "an AA meeting in spikes," he writes.

The following is excerpted from Santiago's 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, a gorgeous graphic-novel biography of the martyred baseball great. Clemente got his 3,000th hit on Sept. 30, 1972, three months before he died in a plane crash. You can watch video of No. 3,000 here; Santiago's rendering below is infinitely…