Paperback Row.

THE VAGRANTS, by Yiyun Li (Random House, $15.) In Muddy River, a town 700 miles from Beijing, 80,000 people live in overcrowded shacks set among small factories. Many are illiterate, and they scheme and steal to stay alive. This novel opens in 1979 as a 28-year-old woman, a former Red Guard who repudiated her past, is about to be executed. A year later, leaflets about her case begin to circulate, and townspeople learn of a ''democratic wall'' in Beijing. Li, who was born in China, writes in English; our reviewer, Pico Iyer, praised her ''grieving and unremitting first novel.'' FRANKLY, MY DEAR: ''Gone With the Wind'' Revisited, by Molly Haskell. (Yale University, $15.) In Scarlett O'Hara, ''the post-suffragette flapper meets the post-feminist power girl,'' Haskell writes. This discursive essay on ''Gone With the Wind'' ''explores the reverberating complexities of the Margaret Mitchell franchise,'' Steve Coates wrote on the Book Review's blog, Paper Cuts. By the time ''Gone With the Wind'' was filmed, Joseph P. Kennedy had left the movie business, in which he had been a serious figure in the 1920s, the owner of several studios. Cari Beauchamp's JOSEPH P. KENNEDY PRESENTS: His Hollywood Years(Vintage, $18.95) shows him as ruthless, firing employees and cheating on his long-suffering wife. Kennedy cared about profits, not art, and he helped shift the industry's concern to short-term gains. He made a lot of money, and he also became deeply involved with Gloria Swanson. Beauchamp's smart, well-sourced book illuminates a sometimes obscure passage in Kennedy's career. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]