Paperbacks new and noteworthy

■ “Little Cruelties,” by Liz Nugent. (Gallery/Scout Press, 352 pp., $16.99.) Sarah Lyall found this Irish thriller about the extremely unpleasant, possibly homicidal Drumm brothers “clever,” adding, “One of the delights, if that is the right word, of this book is how thoroughly the author delves into the details of the family’s world-class dysfunction.”

■ “The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir,” by Sara Seager. (Crown, 336 pp., $17.) In this “stark, bewitching” book, Seager — an astrophysicist at MIT — describes not just her love of space and the struggles she’s faced in her career, but also what it was like to lose her husband at a young age. Her prose, Anthony Doerr wrote in his review, “is full of blues and blacks, written in the ink of grief, suffering, healing and — ultimately — clarity.”

■ “A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir,” by Colin Jost. (Crown, 336 pp., $17.) The longtime “Saturday Night Live” writer and co-anchor of the show’s “Weekend Update” segment has delivered a book tinged with “dry wit and, as his title indicates, a great deal of self-deprecation,” reviewer Peter Keepnews wrote.

■ “What Are You Going Through,” by Sigrid Nunez. (Riverhead, 224 pp., $17.) A woman accompanies her Susan Sontag-like best friend, who’s dying of cancer, through the last months of her life. “This novel has sorrow in it,” Dwight Garner wrote. “It’s also quite funny.” At one point, another character refers to their bond as “Lucy and Ethel Do Euthanasia.”