Paperbacks new and noteworthy

■ “Billy Summers,” by Stephen King. (Gallery, 544 pp., $19.99.) In this thriller, a Marine sniper turned hit man is hired for one last job with a payout of $2 million, but acquires additional targets when he learns that he’s going to be double-crossed. Reviewer James Lasdun wrote that King’s book is full of “lavish action scenes” that erupt with “a satisfying release of pent-up tension.”

■ “Songs for the Flames: Stories,” by Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Translated by Anne McLean. (Riverhead, 272 pp., $16.) This collection, largely narrated in the first person, is primarily preoccupied with war and imperialism, which, as reviewer Justin Taylor wrote, never ended but rather mutated, devolving into “traumas paid out over generations,” legacies of state corruption and endless cycles of violence.

■ “Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature,” by Farah Jasmine Griffin. (Norton, 288 pp., $16.95.) This tender, reflective memoir pays tribute to a long legacy of Black writers in America. “Griffin’s evangelizing of Black literature does what the best sermons do,” Monica Drake wrote in her review. “It sends you back to Scripture” — Baldwin, Coates, Morrison and others — “to ponder and treasure them anew.”

■“Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires,” by Jaime Lowe. (Picador, 320 pp., $18.) This account of the roughly 200 incarcerated women earning a dollar per hour while fighting wildfires in California tackles the state’s economic disparities, the historically dire conditions of its prison system and its struggle to contain the effects of climate change.