Paperbacks new and noteworthy

■ ‘The Testaments,’ by Margaret Atwood. (Anchor, 448 pp., $16.95.) This Booker Prize-winning, spy-thriller sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” takes place 15 years later and has three narrators: Offred’s younger daughter, in Canada; her older daughter, in Gilead; and Aunt Lydia, the handmaids’ warden. Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani described Atwood’s storytelling as “immersive” and “propulsive.”

■ ‘Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story,’ by Marie Arana. (Simon & Schuster, 496 pp., $22.) The Peruvian-born Arana’s “illuminating,” “melancholy” history of Latin America “deserves a wide audience,” Times reviewer Álvaro Enrigue wrote. With its theme of repetition mirrored by its structure, problems “recur like a difficult dream” that instead of finishing “begins again and again.”

■ ‘The Institute,’ by Stephen King. (Gallery Books, 576 pp., $19.99.) “Of all the cosmic menaces that King’s heroes have battled,” according to Times reviewer Laura Miller, the “slow creep into inhumanity” in this novel “may be the most terrifying yet.” Here, the people who torment innocent children — separated from their parents and viewed as “resources, like the children of migrants and other demonized minorities” — are “much like you and me.”

■ ‘The Patient’s Checklist: 10 Simple Hospital Checklists to Keep You Safe, Sane, and Organized,’ by Elizabeth Bailey. (Hachette Go, 192 pp., $15.99.) Abigail Zuger, M.D., called this guide by a patient advocate, revised for our pandemic era, “a godsend for concerned friends and relatives trying to rein in the chaos” when she reviewed it in The Times in 2012.

■ ‘Year of the Monkey,’ by Patti Smith. (Vintage, 224 pp., $16.) Dreams dominate the National Book Award-winning singer-songwriter’s third memoir, a travelogue set in 2016. As she “zigzags” around the country snapping photos, Smith shares what Times reviewer Ken Tucker referred to as her “quivering inner life during her 70th year.” Ten new images and a new chapter have been added.

■ ‘A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind,’ by Harriet A. Washington. (Little, Brown Spark, 384 pp., $17.99.) An award-winning science writer looks at the disproportionate exposure to pollution and blight — from lead poisoning to industrial waste — faced by minority groups, with direct consequences for their success. The paperback features a new preface on COVID-19 risks.