Read 100 books in 2010

Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane.

Synopsis: Summer, 1954. US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumours of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry?As the investigation deepens, the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped an island from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C?

The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island.Because someone is trying to drive them insane . . .

The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks.

Synopsis: Recuperating after the trauma of his recent regeneration, the Doctor falls foul of a final booby-trap set by his arch-enemy, the Master.

When he recovers, the disorientated Doctor looks in a mirror and sees the face of a stranger. He knows only that he is called “the Doctor”—nothing more. But something deep inside tells him to trust the TARDIS, and his hands move over the controls of their own accord.

The TARDIS takes him to a strangely familiar junkyard in late-nineties London, where he is flung into a confrontation between local drug-dealers and Samantha Jones, a rebellious teenager from Coal Hill School.

But the Doctor soon finds the TARDIS transporting him to various other places in order in order to recover all his memories—and that involves seeing seven strangely-familiar faces…

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming.

Synopsis: Beautiful, fortune-telling Solitaire is the prisoner (and tool) of Mr Big; master of fear, artist in crime and Voodoo Baron of Death. James Bond has no time for superstition – he knows that this criminal heavy hitter is also a top SMERSH operative and a real threat. More than that, after tracking him through the jazz joints of Harlem, to the everglades and on to the Caribbean, 007 has realized that Big is one of the most dangerous men that he has ever faced. And no-one, not even the mysterious Solitaire, can be sure how their battle of wills is going to end…

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.

Synopsis: ‘A dry martini,’ Bond said. ‘In a deep champagne goblet. Three measures of Gordons, one of Vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?’ ‘Certainly, monsieur.’ Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, handsome; chillingly ruthless and very deadly. This, the first of Fleming’s tales of agent 007, finds Bond on a mission to neutralize a lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called simply ‘The Cypher’ – by ruining him at the Baccarat table and forcing his Soviet spymasters to ‘retire’ him. It seems that lady luck is taken with James – The Cypher has hit a losing streak. But some people just refuse to play by the rules and Bond’s attraction to a beautiful female agent leads him to disaster and an unexpected saviour …

Doctor Who: The Novel Of The Film by Gary Russel.

Synopsis: Late December, 1999: the brink of a new millennium. An anachronistic British Police Box materialises in San Francisco’s Chinatown amid a hail of bullets which find an unintentional target — a strange man who walks out of the Police Box. Despite the best efforts of Dr Grace Holloway, the unknown traveller dies and his body vanishes. And soon another stranger appears, claiming to be the same man inside a different body; a mysterious wanderer in time and space known only as the Doctor.

But the Doctor is not the only time-traveller in San Francisco. His oldest adversary, the Master, is there as well, desperately trying to steal the Doctor’s newly-regenerated body. Before long, the Doctor is faced with a choice: to save his own life, or the billions of people who have no future unless the Master is stopped. If only the Doctor could remember how…

Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole.

Synopsis: The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Rose to the Justicia System — a prison camp comprising the six planets in that solar system. The pair are separated and trapped in different environments, each determined to escape in their own distinctive style. However, their plans are complicated when some old enemies show up. Are the Slitheen really attempting a takeover of Justicia, or is it something far more sinister?

A Study In Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Synopsis: ‘There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it’.

Arriving in the wilderness of London and in need of lodgings, Dr John Watson finds himself living at 221b Baker Street with one Sherlock Holmes. When a corpse is discovered in a derelict house Watston, fascinated by his brilliant, eccentric companion, is soon drawn into Holmes’ investigations. There’s no sign of a struggle, no wounds on the body, yet scrawled in blood across the walls is the word RACHE – revenge. Watson is baffled but for Holmes the game is afoot…