When Mae Holland is hired to work for the world's most powerful internet company, she can't believe her luck. The Circle, run out of a hip, sprawling California campus, links users' online data with their universal operating system, creating a new age of civility and transparency. But the story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, and democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.