10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2014

No one likes to be made to look foolish by a liar, especially in public. So it's possible Up in the Air novelist Kirn thought twice before writing this nonfiction book about how his supposed friend Clark Rockefeller—a member of the famously well-heeled family, or so Kirn believed—turned out to be a German con man and murderer named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. Blood Will Out engrossingly mixes Kirn's detailing of this real-life Tom Ripley with his own ''How could I not have known?'' self-laceration. Long before the end, you'll realize the author would have been a fool not to have written it. —Clark Collis