Paperbacks new and noteworthy

A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review:

■ “The Plague Year: America in the Time of COVID,” by Lawrence Wright. (Vintage, 416 pages, $18.) Wright’s account of the U.S. government’s failure to properly respond to the coronavirus pandemic is panoramic in its focus, covering politics, science, economics and culture with a commanding scrutiny. Reviewer Sonali Deraniyagala called the book a “virtuoso feat” that manages to surprise about even the episodes we thought we knew well.

■ “Fight Night,” by Miriam Toews. (Bloomsbury, 272 pages, $18.) Toews’ eighth novel is written as a letter from a tangle-haired 9-year-old to her absent father. In it, she recounts her life in a cramped Toronto apartment with her mother and grandmother, two iron-willed women who have survived tragedy and the religious straitjacket of the Mennonite community.

■ “The Books of Jacob,” by Olga Tokarczuk. Translated by Jennifer Croft. (Riverhead, 992 pages, $20.) The Polish novelist’s magnum opus hews closely to the historical record as it follows a young Jewish self-proclaimed messiah, Jacob Frank, in his travels through the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, blending comedy with the tragedies of torture, betrayal and death. Reviewer Dwight Garner called the novel “sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit.”

■ “Velorio,” by Xavier Navarro Aquino. (HarperVia, 272 pp., $17.99.) This debut, set in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, follows six survivors as they navigate the island’s ruins and seek out an idyllic society said to be forming in the mountains. Reviewer Callan Wink praised Aquino’s “visceral, lyric tone that frequently rises to a fever pitch.”