Paperbacks new and noteworthy

■ “The Family Chao,” by Lan Samantha Chang. (Norton, 320 pp., $16.95.) Chang’s third novel, an engrossing and darkly comedic take on “The Brothers Karamazov,” tells a focused and highly readable story about the fortunes of a dysfunctional Chinese immigrant family splintered by the murder of the patriarch, a man disliked by just about everyone in his small Wisconsin town.

■ “The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky,” by Andrew D. Kaufman. (Riverhead, 400 pp., $20.) This comprehensive biography of Anna Dostoyevskaya covers her first encounter with Dostoyevsky as a young stenographer, her poor and often agonized life as his second wife in a marriage held together by her superhuman selflessness and later as his iron-willed publisher.

■ “The Women of Troy,” by Pat Barker. (Anchor, 304 pp., $17.) The second installment of Barker’s feminist retelling of the “Iliad” is once again narrated by Briseis, a captive Trojan queen, as she struggles to survive and plot her revenge after the fall of Troy. New York Times historical fiction columnist Alida Becker wrote that, along with Barker’s outrage, her “insight and compassion are on full display.”

■ “Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law,” by Mary Roach. (Norton, 336 pp., $16.95.) Roach’s exploration of monkey catchers, killer trees, cougar trackers and more is guided by a boundless curiosity and a desire to illuminate the territory where humanity and wildlife overlap and collide, making for “an idiosyncratic tour with Roach as the wisecracking, ever-probing guide,” as reviewer Vicki Constantine Croke wrote.

■ “Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag,” by Rokeya Hossain. Translated by Barnita Bagchi. (Penguin Classics, 240 pp., $16.) This book presents Hossain’s classic sci-fi utopian novel, first published in 1905, which imagines a world where women rule through science and men are relegated to domestic life.