NOTEWORTHY PAPERBACKS

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

UNBELIEVABLE: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History, by Katy Tur. (Dey St./William Morrow, $16.99.) During the 2016 presidential campaign, Tur, an NBC news correspondent, was a favorite target of Donald Trump. Her book was published almost a year after the election; now, updated with a new introduction, it’s a useful testament as Trump’s attacks on the press continue unabated.

IMPROVEMENT, by Joan Silber. (Counterpoint, $16.95.) This novel of interconnected story lines centers on Reyna, a single mother drawn into a cigarette-smuggling scheme by her boyfriend, imprisoned at Rikers. The book expands to encompass 1970s Turkey, Reyna’s aunt and antiquities smugglers. Times reviewer Kamila Shamsie called the novel one “of richness and wisdom and huge pleasure.”

GHOSTS OF THE INNOCENT MAN: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, by Benjamin Rachlin. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.99.) In 1980s North Carolina, Willie Grimes, an African-American man, was found guilty of rape, despite a thin case against him. Rachlin’s profile of Grimes and his 25-year struggle to convince people of his innocence gives resonance and depth to an all-too-common problem.

A LIFE OF ADVENTURE AND DELIGHT: Stories, by Akhil Sharma. (Norton, $15.95.) In tales that leap from Delhi to New York, men behave callously (or worse); marriages dissolve unhappily; and immigrants adapt to new societal expectations. At times, Sharma’s “cultural detail feels like an airing of secrets,” Times reviewer Adrian Tomine wrote. “It’s a testament to the author’s sensitive eye for human foibles that these characters are not only palatable but relatable, and this feat of empathy makes the implicit critique sting even more.”

MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois From Machiavelli to Bellow, by Steven B. Smith. (Yale, $30.) What does it mean to be modern? This intellectual survey considers the question through the work of writers like Spinoza, Hegel and Nietzsche. Smith, a professor at Yale, arrives at some dour conclusions but is skilled at bringing abstract concepts to light.

A BOY IN WINTER, by Rachel Seiffert. (Vintage, $16.) It’s 1941 and Hitler’s armies are sweeping across a Ukrainian town. Two Jewish brothers, Yankel and Momik, are hiding out against their father’s wishes. Seiffert draws on real wartime accounts in her novel; the story unfolds over three days as the town’s residents — including a German engineer and a Ukrainian girl who hides the children — confront wrenching moral choices.