Told through a series of precise, charged vignettes, CIRCA tells the story of Heera Sanyal, the daughter of Bengali immigrants, as she negotiates the complicated, strange proximity of love and grief and struggles with the divide between her parents’ and society’s expectations, and her own vision for the future.
CIRCA
by Devi S. Laskar
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Spring 2022
On the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, Heera and her best friends, siblings Marie and Marco, are rebelliously teasing what fun can be had out of life in Raleigh, North Carolina. But no matter how much Heera defies her strict upbringing, from pickpocketing to vandalism, she’s always avoided any real danger—until Marie is killed in an accident in front of her and Marco. Then everything changes. Marco begins calling himself Crash and over the years to come, spends his days womanizing and burning through a string of jobs. Heera’s dream of college in New York is upended by a family illness. She soon finds herself trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to a wealthy man and in-laws who become fearful of the devastating force of community gossip.
Over the years, Heera and Crash’s paths cross and re-cross, on a journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals—all in the name of love. Heart-wrenching and wry, CIRCA is a story of a young woman torn between familial duty and her own survival. Laskar penetratingly explores within these pages what it means to have an identity fractured by different cultures; issues of emotional inheritance, belonging, grief, and romance; and the many ways that people can disappear, both from themselves and others. Heera’s journey, from North Carolina to New York, and from girlhood to womanhood, reveals the beauty and darkness and revelation inherent in the paths of all those who not only want to survive, but to grow. The novel is also compulsively readable; a true one-sitting read.
Devi S. Laskar is the author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues, which was named a Washington Post “Best Book of the Year” and “A Book All Georgians Should Read” by The Georgia Center for the Book. The novel was the winner of the 2019–2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Adult Fiction and the 2020 Crook’s Corner Book Prize. It was also short-listed for the Northern California Book Awards and long-listed for the 2019 Northern California Golden Poppy Book Award in Fiction and for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Laskar holds an MFA from Columbia University and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been hailed by Marie Claire as “devastatingly potent,” by Booklist as “sharply relevant and tragically timeless,” by Jean Kwok as “searing, powerful, and beautifully written,” and by Kiese Laymon as “narratively beautiful as it is brutal…Laskar has changed how we will all write about state-sanctioned terror in this nation,” to name just a few highlights of praise. She is an alumna of The OpEd Project and VONA.
DIARY OF A MAGPIE tells the story of Stella, a child of Ghanaian parents, born and raised in South West London. Stella is born into the chaos of domestic violence and struggles to make sense of the world around her. She touches wood so that bad things won’t happen to her or her family – until she learns a poem about Magpies, ‘one for sorrow…’ Stella excels academically and achieves professional fulfilment and success once she leaves home. However, she is unable to make evidence-based conclusions about events that unfold around her. Stella continues to rely on superstition to provide meaning to her life; to control the otherwise uncontrollable. She feels her greatest personal happiness when she falls in love but learns that magpies alone can’t protect her from heartbreak, and that the impact of her childhood is something she will have to face – one way or another. 
Samantha Johnson is a forty-year-old, American influencer who runs a wellness empire – Shakti. With an Oscar-winning adaptation of her NYT-bestselling memoir under her belt, a powerful brand as a nononsense motivational speaker, and a booming business which she is about to sell in a multi-milliondollar deal, she has the world at her feet. She’s also launching a new book, CHASTE, in which she talks about her relationship with her sexuality. After writing a viral essay about her teenaged sexual awakening with her (female) best friend, she comes off stage after a sell-out event to some shocking news from her manager. That female best friend, Lisa, is demanding the magazine retract the essay – she never consented to this experience being shared, and what Samantha sees as a powerful erotic moment she sees very differently. She sees it as abuse. Samantha decides to return to the small town she grew up in, to confront Lisa, and convince her to drop the allegations. Once she’s back home, however, Samantha finds herself immediately wrongfooted by Lisa, now married to her high-school sweetheart, and the perfect suburban mom. Forced to confront the past she has whitewashed for years, she finds herself questioning her own memories. For both women have very different versions of how their relationship ended – so whose ‘truth’ is really a lie?
When Saffy’s beloved grandmother, Rose, goes into a care home Saffy learns that she has inherited her Cotswolds cottage. But as work begins on much-needed renovations, the body of a young woman is uncovered in the garden. Who is she? During Rose’s more lucid moments, she reveals snippets of information that Saffy pieces together. And then another body is discovered. As she delves into Rose’s past, Saffy uncovers dark secrets, calling into question everything she thought she knew about her family.
Nothing gets by Jill Bailey. As a CIA analyst, she’s in charge of investigating and vetting new sources. Sources like FALCON, who’s been on the fast-track to recruitment. He says he’s a Syrian defense official attached to a covert biowarfare program–and with a global pandemic fresh in their minds, CIA officials are desperate to use him. It’s Jill’s job to make sure he is who he claims to be, and that his case officers in the field haven’t been duped–or coerced. But before she can get to work, she gets a call. One that’s every parent’s nightmare. We have your son. And to get him back, Jill does something she thought she’d never do. As it turns out, she isn’t the only one with questions about FALCON. Alex Charles, a journalist eager to break the next big story, begins to investigate an anonymous tip: an explosive claim about the CIA’s hottest new source. This is the story that Alex has been waiting for. As the two begin to work together, they uncover a vast conspiracy that will force them to confront their loyalties to family and country. You Can Run is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that will have you asking: What would you do to save the ones you love?