The formation and propagation of small-amplitude heavy-ion-acoustic (HIA) solitary waves and double layers in an unmagnetized collisionless multicomponent plasma system consisting of superthermal electrons, Boltzmann distributed light ions, and adiabatic positively charged inertial heavy ions are theoretically investigated. The reductive perturbation technique is employed to derive the modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) and standard Gardner (SG) equations. The solitary wave (SW) solution of mKdV and SG equations, as well as double layers (DLs) solution of SG equation, is studied for analysis of higher order nonlinearity. It is found that the plasma system under consideration supports positive and negative potential Gardner solitons, but only positive potential mKdV solitons. In addition, it is shown that, the basic properties of HIA mKdV and Gardner solitons and DLs (viz. polarity, amplitude, width, and phase speed) are incomparably influenced by the adiabaticity effect of heavy ions and the superthermality effect of electrons. The relevance of the present findings to the system of space plasmas, as well as to the system of researchers interest, is specified.