New in Paperback: ‘Women Talking’ and ‘How to Disappear’

WOMEN TALKING, by Miriam Toews. (Bloomsbury, 216 pp. , $16. ) In Toews’s sixth novel, the women of a fictional Mennonite colony, all of whom have been raped by men who drug them at night and then tell them they have been possessed by demons, gather to decide whether to stay or plot an escape.

Our reviewer, Jennifer Reese, called the novel “scorching. ” HOW TO DISAPPEAR: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, by Akiko Busch. (Penguin, 207 pp. , $17.

) In this meditation on the merits of being unseen in a culture dominated by self-promoters, Busch explores the comfort and power of invisibility, its place in the natural world and its enduring literary presence. The Book Review’s Gal Beckerman said the book “was like finding the Advil bottle in the medicine cabinet after stumbling about with a headache. ” LATE IN THE DAY, by Tessa Hadley. (Harper Perennial, 273 pp.

, $16. 99. ) At the center of Hadley’s seventh novel are two London couples in their 50s whose lives have long been entangled. When one of the men dies, his widow and friends face long-buried truths that recast the past and their future prospects.

“Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once,” Rebecca Makkai wrote in these pages. SEPARATE: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey From Slavery to Segregation, by Steve Luxenberg.

“(Norton, 600 pp.”

, $19. 95. ) Luxenberg examines the 1896 Supreme Court decision that established segregation, showing how the ruling’s embrace of racial separation is still felt today. Our reviewer, James Goodman, called the book “lovingly researched” and “lively and illuminating.

” MADAME FOURCADE’S SECRET WAR: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler, by Lynne Olson. (Random House, 428 pp. , $20. ) This biography of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the glamorous leader of France’s most effective, longest-running anti-Nazi organization, restores her place as a Resistance hero.