Beyond the airport bookstore: books to get you to your destination
Whether you're packing for your trip or sitting at the gate, we've put together a can't-miss list of books that thousands of readers have loved.
To help you choose, we've grouped these books by flight duration so you can be sure to turn the last page before the seatbelt light turns off.
Short trips: books you can read in less than 3 hours
For flights such as:
- Toronto ✈ New York
- New York ✈ Chicago
- Chicago ✈ Miami
- Los Angeles ✈ San Francisco
- Newark ✈ Orlando
- Vancouver ✈ Calgary
- Halifax ✈ Toronto
Elevation
An eerie story set in Castle Rock, King’s fictional town that sees an unusual number of disturbing phenomena. Scott Carey’s neighbours are trying to launch a restaurant, but coming up against some of the ugly prejudices that can take root in small towns. As he tries to be a good neighbour and come to their aid, he’s got an escalating problem of his own (aside from his neighbours’ dog’s use of his lawn): though he doesn’t feel or look any different, he’s been losing weight steadily for a long time.
View eBookDept. of Speculation
A wife in a troubled marriage tries to retrace the steps back to where things went wrong in this beautiful novel that reflects on all the wonderful things we imagine for ourselves and the people we love. Written in a fragmented style, it’s easy to dip into for an hour or a minute—though you’ll probably read it in a single sitting.
View eBookThe Ballad of Black Tom
At the peak of the Jazz Age, Charles Thomas Tester moves to New York ready to hustle and hoping to catch a bit of the magic the city is known for—but he ends up uncovering a malevolent sorcery that threatens to swallow the world.
View eBookIn The Grip Of It
Nora Watts is still learning the craft of being a private investigator when a child custody dispute turns into a surveillance assignment that takes her to an island in the Pacific Northwest that’s home to Spring Love, a farming community known for its warmth to outsiders. She finds the welcome mat gets rolled up quickly, and starts to wonder what secret this little community is trying to hide.
View eBookNight of the Mannequins
A late summer prank born out of teenage boredom turns into a bloodbath when a mannequin is revealed to be more life-like than anyone expected.
View eBookNutshell
Told from the perspective of a third-trimester fetus, this is the story of Trudy and John, a couple who’ve grown very much apart through Trudy’s pregnancy. The unborn observer grows increasingly concerned with John’s absence, who this other person named Claude is, and what Claude and Trudy have planned for John.
View eBookLast Breath
Charlie Quinn is a lawyer motivated by the desire to defend clients who have no one else to turn to. Flora Faulkner, an honour student living with her grandparents and seeking emancipation, seems like exactly the kind of person Charlie is driven to help. There’s more to Flora’s story than she’s offering up at first, and Charlie has to decide whether picking at the threads of Flora’s tale is worth risking her own entanglement.
View eBookMedium hauls: books you can read in less than 6 hours
For flights such as:
- Cancun ✈ Chicago
- Los Angeles ✈ New York
- Chicago ✈ Las Vegas
- Toronto ✈ Calgary
French Exit
A dryly funny book about an Upper East Side mother and son (and their cat; possibly possessing the spirit of their late husband & father) who find themselves social outcasts on the verge of bankruptcy as they voyage by sea to Paris, where their fortune is sure to finally run out—whether they notice or not.
View eBookKillers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
The Osage Nation in Oklahoma became an extremely wealthy community when they discovered oil on their land in the 1920s. Then the killings started, of key members of the Osage community and anybody who got too interested in their murders. At the same time, the FBI had just been created and its young director J. Edgar Hoover took on the case in partnership with Tom White, a Texas Ranger. This is the story of how they uncovered a cold-blooded conspiracy to wrest wealth away from a community through a series of strategically-plotted murders.
View eBookYearbook
Actor, screenwriter, and comedian Seth Rogen is a very funny guy, and this is a book of him telling stories and being funny. That’s it. That’s the whole pitch.
View eBookCome from Away
In 1939, Grace Baker’s three brothers leave Nova Scotia to fight in Europe alongside allied forces in what would come to be known as the Second World War. Grace stays behind to tend the family’s general store. Three years later, as Grace throws herself into her work in an effort to ignore the reality of German U-Boats sighted along the Atlantic Canadian shoreline, a stranger enters the store and sets off a series of events that lead Grace to confront hidden truths about her family—and the true identity of the stranger.
View eBookThe Wonder
A mystery set in 1850s rural Ireland by the author of Room. Anna O’Donnell appears to be a living miracle: a child fasting as an expression of faith who subsists for weeks on nothing but what she calls “manna from heaven.” A nurse named Lib is hired to keep watch over Anna, and she soon suspects there’s something sinister afoot.
View eBookSuch a Fun Age
A security guard accuses Emira, a Black babysitter, of kidnapping when he spots her in a grocery store with her client Alix’s white two-year-old girl. Alix is shocked by the incident and wants to help. But how? And does Emira want her help? And when the video his social media, nobody can predict what it will do to Emira and Alix’s relationship and their individual senses of who they are.
View eBookEverything I Never Told You
An immigrant family is torn apart when the child they’d invested all their hopes and dreams in turns up dead.
View eBookThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
If you’ve ever wished you could figure out how to roll with things better, without getting steamrolled, this is the book you’ve been looking for. If you’re looking for a book to take on a trip and set the tone for a relaxing vacation, this might be it.
View eBookThe Maid
The Maid is a mystery involving a maid who happens upon a body in a hotel room—and ends up as a prime suspect for murder. This book has a special relationship to air travel: author Nita Prose is a publishing executive who conceived of the plot, inspired by wondering about all the things hotel staff learn about guests in the course of a normal day’s work, on a flight back to Toronto from a conference in London.
View eBookPhoto by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash