Six new paperbacks to check out this week.

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? Essays, by Marilynne Robinson. (Picador, $18.) In a collection of lectures and other writing, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and critic dwells on the current political and cultural climate, and defends the importance of the public university. Above all, Robinson returns to prominent themes across her work: the moral dimension of intellectual development, and the relationship between faith and reason.

THE LOST GIRLS OF CAMP FOREVERMORE, by Kim Fu. (Mariner, $14.99.) An overnight kayaking trip becomes tragic one summer at a camp in the Pacific Northwest, and reverberates throughout the lives of the campers for years to come. Our reviewer, Lisa Ko, praised the novel, writing that Fu is “a propulsive storyteller, using clear and cutting prose to move seamlessly through time.”

ASK ME ABOUT MY UTERUS: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, by Abby Norman. (Bold Type, $16.99.) Norman is one of millions of women across the world with endometriosis, and uses her experience as a jumping-off point to argue that women’s discomfort is routinely dismissed by doctors. Along the way, she interweaves revealing anecdotes — spanning everything from Freud to recent scientific debates.

DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA, by Walter Mosley. (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $15.99.) Joe King Oliver was once one of the N.Y.P.D.’s top investigators, until he was framed for sexual assault and imprisoned. Years later, he’s trying to recover from the horrors he faced in jail and running a private detective agency with his teenage daughter, when he hears from the woman who accused him: She found religion and wants to clear her conscience. King then begins the tricky process of looking into who wanted him off the police force — and why.