April 14, 2026
 April 14, 2026 This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this spring. Read more about it, and enter our Spring Reading Contest by Wednesday, April 15th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR by Devi S. Laskar, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!  Today's Featured Book and Contest:  Inspired by journalists Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR is a novel about a reporter chasing the biggest story of her career as she contends with a tense newsroom, a dangerous global conflict, and all the problems she’s running away from at home, by the acclaimed novelist that Megha Majumdar calls “a gem of a writer.” Foreign correspondent Rita Das has left New York for the war-torn Middle East, a reassignment she asked for after learning she is pregnant but uncertain if the father is her husband or her lover. As she strives to shed light on the fallouts of the war, Rita finds herself embroiled in her own conflicts with her interpreter and her news editor, her sources and her colleagues. She is unable to accept the loss of her mother and deal with her guilt for not being at her side when she died. Fiercely independent and ambitious (and, in her journalism, deeply humane), Rita is also in denial about her need for intimate human relationships. As she goes into the field to report on the war, she grapples with the physical and emotional tolls of her pregnant body and a turbulent region where the numbing repetition of war slides suddenly into horror. When her news editor delivers urgent orders for her to return to New York, Rita is faced with a choice about how she wants to live her life as a journalist and a soon-to-be mother. Set in the years immediately after 9/11, and drawn from Devi Laskar’s own experience as a government reporter in the 1990s and early aughts, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR is an exploration of love and grief, of moral ambiguity and forgiveness, of modern war and the wars we wage within ourselves. Click here to enter the contest Watch or Listen to Our “Bookreporter Talks To”  Our latest “Bookreporter Talks To” interview is with Devi S. Laskar, who joins Carol Fitzgerald to discuss her third novel, MIDNIGHT, AT THE WAR, which is set primarily in the years after 9/11. The protagonist, Rita Das, is a journalist inspired by Christiane Amanpour and Sylvia Poggioli, who planted themselves in conflict zones for their reporting. The book explores both personal and professional challenges faced by Rita, who is running from conflicts in her own life into parts of the world where she finds herself in unknown political circumstances as she works. She has complicated relationships, including a rocky marriage, a lover, a sick mother, and difficulties with her father. The unnamed location where Rita is stationed allows readers to focus on universal themes rather than specific geopolitical details. It provides a look at a time when journalism was much more fact-based than it is now, where the most important thing seems to be “being first” instead of “being right.” Click here to watch the interview or here to listen to the podcast. This is a special newsletter for our Spring Reading contests, which will mail on select days through mid-April. This newsletter is separate from our weekly Bookreporter.com newsletter, which mails every Friday. You can subscribe to that newsletter here. You also can subscribe to our "On Sale This Week" newsletter, which mails every Tuesday, here. And you can sign up for our Events newsletter here. Please visit the other websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com: ReadingGroupGuides.com and AuthorsOnTheWeb.com. |
