As an absolute sucker for fine book design and sweet surprises, I couldn't help swooning the first time I peeled back the dust jacket on Ania Szado's new novel Studio Saint-Ex. The dust jacket itself was lovely enough, retro-glam as befits this novel about New York City society in the 1940s, decorated with the whimsy of silver stars for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry who was both a pilot and author of The Little Prince.

But the dust jacket was only the beginning. I removed the dust jacket to discover not the dull hardback I'd been expecting, but instead even more silver stars embossed upon the book itself.

The effect was as magical as it was meant to be, and it got me thinking about other books in my library that hide fantastic surprises underneath their sometimes staid dust jacket coverings.

It's most appropriate that Lorna Crozier's The Book of Marvels, a book that celebrates the hidden magic of ordinary objects, would be an extraordinary ordinary object in and of itself. Once again, the dust jacket itself is perfectly lovely, this compact book design a riff on less scintillating collections of household tips and hints. But behold the book with its clothes off...

The Book of Marvels is argyle, a fact I'm really not sure I will ever entirely get over. I read this one sans jacket on the bus, and people kept stopping me to ask about it.

My final buff book pick is sort of cheating, because it's self-evident that a Gaspereau Press book would be of spectacular design.

Heather Jessup's The Lightning Field is the story of broken dreams and airplanes, about an aircraft engineer who crafts the wings of the ill-fated Avro Arrow.

And underneath its cover, the book looks like this, gorgeously airplaned in some incredible geometry.

What's hiding underneath your dust jackets? What beautiful books in the buff do you have in your collection? We'd love to know so tell us in the comments below.