Just Watch Me, by Lior Torenberg (Avid Reader). Dell, the narrator of this tragicomic novel, lives in a tiny apartment that used to be a walk-in closet. She also has a sister who’s in a coma. When Dell loses her job at a smoothie shop, after throwing a jar of almond butter at a customer, she decides to start live-streaming, asking viewers to fund her sister’s life support. Soon, Dell discovers she has a knack for streaming, owing to her snarky charisma and willingness to take shocking dares. But she begins to receive messages from an anonymous viewer, who threatens to expose a hidden truth about her. Unfolding over a week, the book is both a reflection on the nature of vulnerability and a pointed commentary on internet culture.
Volga Blues, by Marzio G. Mian (Norton). In this travelogue of the Volga River—“Russia’s epicenter of culture, faith, and identity”—an undercover journalist grapples with contemporary Russia. Between the river’s source, entrusted to an order of Orthodox nuns, and its southern delta, where caviar bound for the Kremlin is harvested, the author journeys through a defiant country transformed by war, sanctions, and reinvigorated patriotism. Braiding snapshots of the present with history, Mian depicts a country haunted by threats to its national integrity, where people have come to believe that “questioning their leaders . . . creates social conflict and exposes the country to foreign occupation”—a tension that, he argues, has arisen in Western democracies as well.