My semi (but not really) annual list of my favourite books of all time

Life Expectancy-Dean Koontz
This is my favourite book ever. It's about Jimmy Tock, who when he was born, his grandfather made all these predictions about him. That he would get syndactyly (a fusing of fingers and/or toes) when he would be born, how big he would be, and also that there would be five terrible days in his life. The book is about the five terrible days, and how they transform his life in miraculous ways. It has an underlying theme of the importance of family and love and hope.

One Door Away From Heaven-Dean Koontz
This is the second book I ever read by him. There are a couple of different story lines. First, Micky Bellsong is a burnt out alcoholic whose life is going nowhere. She meets Leilani, a ten year old girl who is crippled, but spunky and precocious. Leilani's father is Preston Maddoc, who is going to kill her on her tenth birthday and tell her pothead mother that aliens took her to heal her. When the family moves, Micky follows them to save Leilani. There is also a private detective who has lost his will to live, that Micky employs to help her find Leilani, and a mysterious boy named Curtis and his impossibly smart dog who are running from unknown enemies. They all meet in an unexpected climax.

Velocity-Dean Koontz
Billy is a bartender who is an unwilling hero when he finds a note on his car windshield basically saying that either a pretty blonde schoolteacher could die, or an elderly lady could, he had to choose. He keeps getting notes like that while desperately trying to find the murderer. My mom and I had a bet on who was the murderer. She won (sort of) but I never paid up.

By the Light of the Moon-Dean Koontz
Dylan is abducted and injected with a mysterious substance that could transform his life in wonderful ways...if he gets away from the assassins trying to kill him. Along with his autistic brother Shep and a wannabe comedian named Jilly, they try to understand their newfound powers (the ability to read people's souls in things they touched, clairvoyance, and the ability to fold reality to travel instantaneously) and get away from the assassins.

Murder on the Links-Agatha Christie
I can't really remember. Some guy was murdered and thrown into a shallow grave. I only remember the part where Hastings, Poirot's sidekick, meets his future wife when she becomes a suspect.

The Big Four-Agatha Christie
A criminal organization is headed by four people. Number 1: The Mastermind, Number 2: The Money, Number 3: The Brain, and Number 4: The Destroyer. Poirot and Hastings embark on an extensive search to destroy The Big Four. We are introducted to Poirot's fraudulent twin brother, Achilles.

Memoirs of a Geisha-Arthur Golden
Everyone knows this one. The story of Sayuri and her journey to geishadom. It's way better than the movie. The only thing I don't like is that the guy that Sayuri is in love with is forty years older than her or something. But anyway, Arthur Golden got the cattiness and manipulativeness (word?) of women just right.

The Storyteller's Daughter-Cameron Dokey
This is a movie called Arabian Nights or something. The people have really long Arabic names. The guy will be A, and the girl will be B. A is a king who caught his wife cheating on him and he got so angry at women in general that he said he would take a wife every day and then kill her in the morning. Along comes B, who resolves to melt his heart so he won't kill any more women. She starts telling stories (she is a storyteller's daughter, hence the title. Also, she is blind, but I'm not sure if that's important to the story) Anyway, she ends each story on a cliffhanger, so he doesn't kill her. Then he starts to fall in love with her, and she melts his heart (metaphorically) and its a happy ending.

A Great and Terrible Beauty-Libba Bray
This is also one of my favourite books of all time. Set in the Victorian age, a girl named Gemma starts getting visions. Then she moves to a boarding school in England and they become more intense. Turns out that her mother (who was murdered) was part of a guild or something that protects "the realms" and I'm not sure exactly what they are. But the power is gone for some reason. I can't remember. Gemma finds out she is the one that will bring the power to the realms and open them again. She is hampered by a group of men who want the realms to stay shut and the mysterious Circe, who wants the power for herself, but if that happens then it will be very bad. Anyway, very good book.

Ella Enchanted-Gail Carson Levine
Okay, first let me say, that this is NOTHING LIKE THE MOVIE. Ella has a curse on her, which is she has to obey everyone. EVERY command, she has to obey. When her father marries an evil woman with two equally evil stepsisters (yes, it is a Cinderella ripoff) she decided to find the fairy that put the curse on her and get it removed.

Prey-Michael Crichton
This is about Jack, a computer expert who is called in to the company where his wife, Julia, works, to retrieve a swarm of malevolent nanobots who have escaped from the facility. He discovers that all is not as it seems, as everyone at the facility starts acting strangely.

Timeline-Michael Crichton
A group of archaeologists go back in time to the Medieval Ages to retrive their wayward professor, and things get complicated when a military dude brings a grenade there against rules, and then accidentally sets it off when he grabs the pod to go back home. It then explodes, wrecking the facility in the present day, so if anyone from the past tries to go back to the future, it wouldn't work. In the present they work against the clock to fix the time traveling machine, and in the past they desperately try to stay alive.

Andromeda Strain-Michael Crichton
A mysterious virus has killed everyone in a town, and a team of researchers race to discover a cure.

Sphere-Michael Crichton
A group of researchers go underwater to investigate what is possibly an extraterrestrial spaceship, and when they find a large silver sphere, weird things start happening, including killer jellyfish and squid.

Angels and Demons-Dan Brown
This is the book that came before The Da Vinci Code. Robert Langdon is called to the Vatican to find four missing priests that are in the running to become the new Pope. Why call a symbologist? The four priests are on an ancient trail that people allegedly took to become Illuminati. They're being killed one by one, and Langdon is racing to find them before any more die. (Spoiler: they all die)