What is the deal with these authors fabricating their memoirs? You’d think that after James Frey’s reputation broke into a million little pieces on Oprah, that’d be the end of it. But now we hear two other authors have come out of the closet.

Last week Misha Defonseca, author of “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” admitted she spent the war in Brussels, safe and sound. And she’s not even Jewish. Isn’t that somewhat like stealing from Santa Claus?

This week author Margaret B. Jones confessed that her memoir about growing up in South Central L.A. and running drugs for the Bloods is not true. ”Love and Consequences” was critically acclaimed. Now the author’s toast.

Was Ms. Jones/Seltzer/whatever-her-real-name-is watching Oprah that day she eviscerated Frey for lying about his book and thinking to herself, “Hey, I could do that.”

I just don’t understand. Why didn’t they peddle their books as what they are — fiction. And don’t editors at publishing houses check these things?

Maybe the reality-TV generation is to blame. Maybe we’re so hungry as a people to experience others’ misfortune that the tragic memoir is a better selling point than a well-written, riveting work of fiction about a made-up person’s tragic misfortune. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my schadenfreude served up with a side order of truth.

Please, Jeanette Walls, don’t be next…