The Reader’s Corner

Two plots - one financial, the other terrorist - are being hatched, but there’s much more going on in this absorbing big-canvas view of contemporary London from Faulks. John Veals, a middle-aged hedge fund manager, is planning the collapse of a major British bank. His goal? To pump even more billions of dollars into his fund. Hassan al-Rashid, a young Muslim raised in Scotland, belongs to a jihadist cell. By chance, their schemes will climax simultaneously in December 2007. A cast of side characters and stories offers light relief, love interest, and some humanism. Remarkably, Faulks retains control of his material as he shows us a world in which money rules, tunnel vision destroys and love remains the touchstone and redeemer.

Thick with Gothic atmosphere, Arcadia Falls is a fast-moving story with all the essential elements: buried secrets, supernatural occurrences, and a creepy setting. Following the death of her husband, Meg Rosenthal accepts a job teaching at an upstate New York boarding school and moves there with her teenage daughter, Sally. The school, Arcadia Falls, also happens to be central to her thesis, which focuses on two female coauthors of fairy tales, one of whom died mysteriously in 1947. Once there, however, Meg thinks she sees ghosts and Arcadia’s brightest and most ambitious student, Isabel Cheney, is found dead in a ravine. Feeling Sally drifting further from her each day, Meg finds refuge in the preserved diary of one of her thesis’ authors and begins to unravel the secrets behind Isabel’s death.

On December 7, 1941, five brothers exploring a shaft on a small island off the coast of Washington State make an extraordinary discovery, only to be interrupted by news of Pearl Harbor. In the present, Cabrillo, chasing the remnants of a crashed satellite in the Argentine jungle, stumbles upon a shocking revelation of his own. His search to untangle the mystery leads him, first, to that small island and its secret, and then much farther back, to an ancient Chinese expedition-and a curse that seems to have survived for more than five hundred years. If Cabrillo’s team is successful in its quest, the reward could be incalculable. If not . . . the only reward is death.

Life doesn’t get more hilarious than when Chelsea Handler takes aim with her irreverent wit. Who else would send all-staff emails to smoke out the dumbest people on her show? Now, in this new collection of original essays, the #1 bestselling author of Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea delivers one laugh-out-loud moment after another as she sets her sights on the ridiculous side of childhood, adulthood, and daughterhood.