Nothing makes me stir crazy like the dog days of winter, when spring is right around the corner but it's still not yet mild enough to pack away my winter coat. To ease that restless feeling, I'd love to hop on a plane and head toward a far-flung corner of the earth for some adventure. When that's not possible (most days), I escape with a book instead. Below are my favorite escapist reads—just close the door, take the phone off the hook and enjoy.

	Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal I picked this up at a second-hand book store on a trip to London, and it was a great piece of reading for the long flight home. The second novel by Syal, comedienne and writer of Goodness Gracious Me fame, follows the lives of three East Indian women in London as they struggle with and against their cultural ideals. Overworked lawyer and harried mother Sunita battles with the complacency of marriage, while ice queen and career woman Tanya tries to make her glamorous life as fulfilling as it seems from the outside. The story begins with when the third friend in the circle, innocent, simple Chila, shockingly manages to bag every Indian mother's dream—successful bachelor Deepak. The dynamic between these friends, their relationships with each other and their partners is refreshing, funny and extremely readable. It's an interesting take on modern South Asian culture and a departure from the epic historical dramas that many South Asian authors are drawn to.
	What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin  Speaking of epic historical dramas … this book is a large, sweeping saga about Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan, focusing on the plight of Sikhs in what becomes a Hindu/Muslim world. But more than that, it is the story of women and their roles in colonial India. Never have I felt more the plight of women struggling to be heard as I did in this book. It was beautiful and moving and ironic and poetic all at once—an epic that drags you in and makes you live the lives of its characters. At the end, you are torn between the futility of their existence and the utter significance of it. It was a truly stunning work that kept me engrossed from the first page to the last, and it's a book I will be discussing at dinner parties for years to come.
	Honeymoon in Purdah by Alison Wearing This beautifully written, absorbing travelogue of a Canadian woman and her gay roommate touring Iran has become the favorite of everyone I have given it to. Wearing weaves the sights and smells of Iran together so well, you can feel the country in your bones; her vignettes of the people are surprising, humorous and touching. Best of all, Wearing's incurable wanderlust and devil-may-care attitude take her on some surprising adventures and will propel you along each page, waiting to find out what happens next. A must read.
	Uhuru Street by M.G. Vassanji The life that two-time Giller prize Winner M.G. Vassanji depicts in the small South Asian community of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzani,a is the same one in which my parents grew up—maybe that's why I was so drawn to it. Uhuru Street is filled with the kinds of characters my parents used to reminisce about around the dinner table, from Roshan Mattress (her last name implying what she was known for) to Baby, the indulged and blubbery grocer's daughter. Reading these stories took me to a place I have never been to but know exceedingly well nonetheless; the stories weaved and gossip exchanged over steaming cups of chai were absorbed by osmosis as I was growing up. But Vassanji's gift is the ability to make others relate. Even if you didn't hail from this tiny place in east Africa, you will instantly fall into the world he paints, from hearing the wives' biting gossip to feeling the crack of the headmaster's paddle.
	The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Stuck on an interminable layover in the Hamburg airport for four hours, I happily threw myself into this fascinating and absorbing story, hailed by many as "the Bible if it had been written by a woman." The Red Tent is the place women go when they are having their periods, and represents the communion, friendship and complex web of relationships between mothers, wives and daughters. Diamant takes the Biblical story of Dinah, which is briefly recounted by her brothers in the Book of Genesis, and retells it from her perspective, introducing her four mothers, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah, all sisters and wives to Jacob. Diamant takes Dinah from a mere Biblical mention and gives her history, significance and life. In doing so, Diamant gives identity to the countless women who have been passed over in history. The emotions this story calls up are so real and visceral that I had to look up from the page every now and then just to reassure myself that it was fiction.
	Ella Minnow Pea (say it out loud) by Mark Dunn I have always loved letters—the shape of them, the way they look on a page, the comforting order of the alphabet. Maybe that's what made this book even more enjoyable. It is a fantastically original and quirky tale about the fictional island of Nollop, named after Nevin Nollop, creator of the immortal alphabetical phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Nollopians have been raised to cherish Nollop and the English language, and as letters of the sentence start to fall off Nollop's cenotaph, town elders take it as an omen from Nollop himself to stop using the letters in their vocabulary. Ella and the residents of Nollop join together to fight against the censorship and totalitarianism of the Island Council. What makes this even better: the novel is written in letter form between Ella and the townspeople, and as the letters of the alphabet are each outlawed, they stop appearing in the book. Not only is it a real treat to read, its underlying messages about the dangers of censorship and absolute power ring just as true in the real world as they do in Nollop.
	A Boy of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews The first novel by Miriam Toews, who went on to win the Giller Prize, is a quirky and whimsical read much in the same vein as Ella Minnow Pea. The story takes place in the fictional town of Algren, Manitoba. Algren is tiny—so tiny that it is in the race for the smallest town in Canada, which the prime minister has promised to visit on Canada Day. Mayor Hosea Funk obsesses at keeping the town population at 1,500; any more residents and it loses status as the country's smallest town, any less and it becomes a village. All the while, protagonist Knute struggles with life as a single mom to daughter Summer Feelin' (because there is nothing more beautiful in Manitoba in February than that Summer Feelin'). Toews manages to take real people with real problems and add just enough of the absurd to make it interesting. Her wacky characters and zany plot turns are guaranteed to be a departure from anything else you read this spring.