A Week in December, Sebastian Faulks

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days the lives of seven major characters are followed: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.