Great airplane reading?

On NPR's Morning Edition on July 10, Nancy Pearl, celebrated reader's advisor and inspiration for a famed librarian action-figure, addressed the dilemma of choosing a perfect airline carry-on book. Click here for more on the story.

Nancy said: "I've finally realized what makes a perfect carry-on book: You want a book — either fiction or nonfiction — that's complex enough to smother your annoyance when the guy in the row ahead reclines his seat into your lap, but not so intellectually challenging that it demands a dictionary. No plotless wonders with paragraph-length sentences; you need to be able to put the book down when the person sitting by the window needs to step over you to get to the bathroom. Mostly you want something that's intriguing enough to make you forget that you're 34,000 feet in the air and, in your heart of hearts, you don't really understand how the plane stays up."

These are my choices of intriguing page-turners:

Tell me where it hurts : a day of humor, healing and hope in my life as an animal surgeon by Nick Trout. Find this book in our catalog.
An insider portrait of a veterinarian and his furry patients. This is humorous and touching, and intriguing because of the blend of old-fashioned instincts and cutting-edge technology.

The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman Find this book in our catalog.
Three women are drawn together in London for an impending marriage and by a tragic accident witnessed by one of them at age twelve. Lucy blames herself for the accident and spends four decades searching for the Third Angel - the angel on earth who will renew her faith. This draws you in by its strangeness and the sense of history repeating itself. It also has a ghost.

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander Find this book in our catalog.
Emily questions the role in Victorian society to which she, as a woman, is relegated. To escape her overbearing mother she accepts a loveless marriage, but when her dashing husband is killed on safari soon after their wedding she is intriqued to find evidence in his diaries of a life she knew little about. Her inquiries take her into the realm of stolen museum treasures and into danger where no-one is really what they seem. What's intriguing about this is the mystery of the identity of the art thieves. The setting of Victorian Society is very detailed.

The Bride's Kimono by Sujata Massey Find this book in our catalog.
I enjoy all of Sujata Massey's mysteries - they will transport you with the cultural background of the protagonist, Rei Shimura, a young Japanese-American antiques dealer. This absorbing, romantic, and sexy murder mystery was particularly well-reviewed. Rei is commissioned to bring a parcel of valuable kimonos from Japan to Washington. One of the kimonos disappears, and Rei has to dicover its significance in an ancient Japanese love triangle, and also unmask a murderer.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber Find this book in our catalog.
This is a great page-turner that should make you forget everything else. Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer - or killers - unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one is to be trusted.

What would your preferred airline reading be?