You were really hoping that Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease video would get things steamy between the sheets.

Instead it landed you in bed with a sprained ankle and a crick in your neck.

Perhaps a safer bet is to exercise the mind with Kelly DiNardo’s new historical narrative, Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique.

Gilded Lili tells the tale of American-born Lili St. Cyr, the 1950s burlesque queen whose influence grew as large as her … well, you know. Rumored to have inspired Marilyn Monroe, she became famous for her classy and sensual thematic stripteases.

St. Cyr’s tumultuous family life (her mother abandoned her; her grandparents raised her), shaky love affairs (she married and divorced six times to men ranging from a ballet dancer to a racecar driver), and her much criticized career (she spent her share of time arguing in court that striptease was a tasteful form of art) are all laid bare in the book.

In other words, it’s hot and heavy between the covers.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.