I actually thought of you when I was going through those books. I had a lot more stuff by Michael Palmer and Dean Koontz than I thought. I also had some Richard North Patterson (a polished hack), James Patterson (fair), and Robin Cook. I also had 5 Child/Preston books; I had completely forgotten them except for Relic/Reliquary. I had Riptide, Dragon's Mountain or some such, and Ice Limit. I remembered Dragon's Mountain a little and didn't like it; I had completely forgotten the other two, and kept Riptide to re-read and see if I liked it or not. All that stuff and plenty, plenty more (I had all the Star Wars books through about 1999, which is something like 20 titles; I couldn't remember a single thing that happened in any of them ), is now the property of the Phoenix Library system, if you want to make an offer.

I also came across the last really good science fiction series I read, The Legacy Of Herot and Beowulf's Children, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and some other guy whose name I forget. They are two first rate books for what they are. Pournelle and Niven have been favorites of mine since childhood when I read their Lucifer's Hammer (another excellent book for what it is), which is a good companion read to Steven King's The Stand, because it takes the same subject matter and goes in an entirely different direction with it. Anyway, if you like character-driven science fiction, Pournelle/Niven would be good airplane reading for you, as would the other stuff I listed.