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merica the complicated. Defense lawyers down South are too often compared to Atticus Finch, but Bryan Stevenson, whose Just Mercy (Spiegel & Grau) chronicles his crusades for the rights of the oppressed and unjustly incarcerated, proves he's deserving.

Novelist Carolyn Chute, voice of America's militia-building, weapons-stockpiling, homeschooling rural lower classes, fires off the deeply felt, scorchingly funny Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves (Grove). Richard

Ford's Let Me Be Frank with You (Ecco) reunites readers with the beloved, irascible failed sportswriter Frank Bascombe. With grace, wit, and derring-do, Jamie Malanowski revives the daredevil Civil War hero Commander Will Cushing (Norton). Cinephiles Michael McGriff and J. M. Tyree co-author the story collection Our Secret Life in the Movies

(A Strange Object). Walter Isaacson

hacks into the lives of The Innovators

of the Digital Revolution (Simon & Schuster). Jim Dwyer's More Awesome than Money (Viking) is the David-and-Goliath tale of four N.YU. students who took on Facebook. Corine McCandless's brother ventured into the Alaskan wilderness, never to return; she relives the tragedy in Die Wild Truth (HarperOne). Philip Gefter's Wagstaff (Liveright) gives the art collector, curator, and iconoclast his moment. Philip Hook's Breakfast at Sotheby's (Overlook) elevates

beauty, while Sarah Thornton's 33 Artists in 3 Acts (Norton) brings the aesthetic world down to earth. Mark Bailey reels through drunken celeb hijinks in Of All the Gin Joints (Algonquin). Richard Norton Smith meets Nelson Rockefeller On His Own Terms (Random House). Lydia Millet's honeymooners battle real-estate developers poaching

Mermaids in Paradise (Norton). Hiding in Plain Sight (Riverhead) sees Nuruddin Farah exploring the new territory of gender and identity. Bradford Morrow illuminates the seamy side of the rare-book trade in The Forgers (Mysterious Press). Mark Schultz's Foxccitcher (Dutton) takes the murderer of his Olympic-wrestler brother to the mat. Denis Johnson's double-agent antihero plunges into the Congo in The Laughing Monsters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Hannah — ELISSA Pittard returns, happily, with Re- SCHAPPELL union (Grand Central). Warning:

Megan Amram's Science ...for Her! (Scribner) causes combustive laughter. Morphine runs through the veins of William J. Mann's Tinseltown (Harper). Kevin Fortuna's The Dunning Man (Lavender Ink) abounds with society's rejects. A hapless husband seeks to rekindle romance in David Nicholls's Us (Harper). Eric Kaplan asks, Does Santa Exist? (Dutton). N.Y.T.B.R. editor Pamela Paul compiles the invaluable By the Book (Henry Holt).

ELISSA SCHAPPELL