Maybe a bit late, but if you've got notifications on, you'll get these. In no particular order:
Magician: Apprentice, by Raymond Feist. Feist is currently one of my favorite fantasy authors. His books take a little while to get into, but if you make it a quarter of the way through this, I can pretty much guarantee that you're going to want to keep reading through A Darkness at Sethanon. Feist is pretty good at keeping his different story arcs from being too dependent on the ones before, but each series pretty much does need to be read as one unit.
The Deed of Paksennarion, by Elizabeth Moon. I was never able to get much into Moon's other stuff, but I love this one. The tale of a sheepfarmer's daughter who goes off to become a mercenary, and ends up ascending far beyond anything she'd dreamed of. Some very nicely handled religious and sexuality stuff. The title I gave is for the collected edition, because I can't remember the titles of the individual volumes. Some poking around should turn it up, though.
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. He's gotten a lot more press for The Baroque Cycle and its prequel Cryptonomicon, but most people who have read his stuff agree that this is where he peaked. Absolutely great near-future cyberpunk, starring a Mafia Pizza Delivery Man with a pair of Samurai swords.
Lois McMaster Bujold. I can't just stick to one book here. Possibly my favorite author at the moment, skellington1 got me hooked on her stuff. She's got three main universes that she writes in. A Civil Campaign is a pretty good place to start with her SF stuff, although it's pretty late in the series chronology and does contain some spoilers for earlier books. Shards of Honor is chronologically first. The Curse of Chalion is a good start for one of her fantasy series, and Beguilement is the best starting point for The Sharing Knife series. She does a pretty good job of making them readable in any order, though.
Let's round this out with a classic one. The Count of Monte Criste, by Alexandre Dumas. Don't get scared by how hefty this book is, it's a real page turner. I finished it in about 5 days. One of the classic stories of betrayal and revenge, set in the years after Napoleon.
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Magician: Apprentice, by Raymond Feist. Feist is currently one of my favorite fantasy authors. His books take a little while to get into, but if you make it a quarter of the way through this, I can pretty much guarantee that you're going to want to keep reading through A Darkness at Sethanon. Feist is pretty good at keeping his different story arcs from being too dependent on the ones before, but each series pretty much does need to be read as one unit.
The Deed of Paksennarion, by Elizabeth Moon. I was never able to get much into Moon's other stuff, but I love this one. The tale of a sheepfarmer's daughter who goes off to become a mercenary, and ends up ascending far beyond anything she'd dreamed of. Some very nicely handled religious and sexuality stuff. The title I gave is for the collected edition, because I can't remember the titles of the individual volumes. Some poking around should turn it up, though.
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. He's gotten a lot more press for The Baroque Cycle and its prequel Cryptonomicon, but most people who have read his stuff agree that this is where he peaked. Absolutely great near-future cyberpunk, starring a Mafia Pizza Delivery Man with a pair of Samurai swords.
Lois McMaster Bujold. I can't just stick to one book here. Possibly my favorite author at the moment,
Let's round this out with a classic one. The Count of Monte Criste, by Alexandre Dumas. Don't get scared by how hefty this book is, it's a real page turner. I finished it in about 5 days. One of the classic stories of betrayal and revenge, set in the years after Napoleon.