Here is a listing of a few of my favourite books.
Bernard Cornwell - Warlord Chronicles
Volumes: The Winter King, Enemy of God, Excalibur
Cornwell interweaves elements of history, mysticism, and folklore, spinning a fantastic revision of the standard Arthurian legend. In this version, Arthur, the bastard son of Uther, pledges his fidelity and protection to his infant nephew, Mordred, the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Dumnonia. In a Britain populated by both druids and Christians, torn asunder by feuding regional factions, and threatened by invading Saxons, Arthur emerges as a powerful, courageous warlord capable of inspiring loyalty and healing festering wounds. Yet, instead of being a unifying force, Arthur initially contributes to the prevailing chaos by eloping with a calculating and manipulative Guinevere, prompting a series of vicious and bloody battles. Cornwell has painted a portrait of Arthur as both a mythic hero and a complex man motivated in turn by duty, honor, and passion.
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord Of The Rings
Volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King
A Christian can almost be forgiven for not reading the Bible, but there's no salvation for a fantasy fan who hasn't read the gospel of the genre, J.R.R. Tolkien's definitive three-book epic, the Lord of the Rings (encompassing The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King), and its charming precursor, The Hobbit. That many (if not most) fantasy works are in some way derivative of Tolkien is understood, but the influence of the Lord of the Rings is so universal that everybody from George Lucas to Led Zeppelin has appropriated it for one purpose or another.
Not just revolutionary because it was groundbreaking, the Lord of the Rings is timeless because it's the product of a truly top-shelf mind. Tolkien was a distinguished linguist and Oxford scholar of dead languages, with strong ideas about the importance of myth and story and a deep appreciation of nature. His epic, 10 years in the making, recounts the Great War of the Ring and the closing of Middle-Earth's Third Age, a time when magic begins to fade from the world and men rise to dominance. Tolkien carefully details this transition with tremendous skill and love, creating in the Lord of the Rings a universal and all-embracing tale, a justly celebrated classic.
Jean M. Auel - Earth's Children Series
Volumes: The Clan of the Cave Bear, Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, Plains of Passage, The Shelters of Stone
Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children Series of novels offers a marvelous glimpse into what could have been the history of early mankind. The series tells the tale of the girl known as Ayla from her beginnings as an orphaned 5-year-old child in prehistoric Europe, to her rescue by a clan of people quite different from her, to her growing into womanhood in an extremely harsh and unforgiving environment, to her search for humans more like herself, and to her continuing exploration of the area and the people who inhabit - and try to stay alive - in it.
Marion Bradley - Mysts Of Avalon
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"There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you." The Mists of Avalon is a story of another time and place. It's the legendary saga of King Arthur and his companions at Camelot, their battles, love, and devotion, told this time from the perspective of the women involved. Viviane is "The Lady of the Lake," the magical priestess of the Isle of Avalon, a special mist-shrouded place which becomes more difficult to reach as people turn away from its nature- and Goddess-oriented religion. Viviane's quest is to find a king who will be loyal to Avalon as well as to Christianity. This king will be Arthur. Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen, is an overly pious, fearful woman who successfully sways her husband into betraying his allegiance to Avalon. Set against her is Morgaine of the Fairies, Arthur's sister, love, and enemy - and the most powerfully believable person in the book - who manipulates the characters like threads in a tapestry to achieve her tragic and heroic goals. The Mists of Avalon becomes a legend seen through new eyes, with details, majestic language, and haunting foreshadowing that hold the reader through its more than 800 pages.
Frank Herbert - Dune
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This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence.
The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from the Harkonnen Noble House to House Atreides. The Harkonnens don't want to give up their privilege, though, and through sabotage and treachery they cast young Duke Paul Atreides out into the planet's harsh environment to die. There he falls in with the Fremen, a tribe of desert dwellers who become the basis of the army with which he will reclaim what's rightfully his. Paul Atreides, though, is far more than just a usurped duke. He might be the end product of a very long-term genetic experiment designed to breed a super human; he might be a messiah. His struggle is at the center of a nexus of powerful people and events, and the repercussions will be felt throughout the Imperium.
Dune is one of the most famous science fiction novels ever written, and deservedly so. The setting is elaborate and ornate, the plot labyrinthine, the adventures exciting. Five sequels follow.
Edward Rutherfurd - Sarum
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A first novel, Rutherfurd's sweeping saga of the area surrounding Stonehenge and Salisbury, England, covers 10,000 years and includes many generations of five families. Each family has one or more characteristic types who appear in successive centuries: the round-headed balding man who is good with his hands; the blue-eyed blonde woman who insists on having her independence; the dark, narrow-faced fisher of river waters and secrets. Their fortunes rise and fall both economically and politically, but the land triumphs over the passage of time and the ravages of humans. Rutherfurd has told the story of the land he was born in and has told it well. The verbosity of a Michener is missing, but all the other elements are present, from geology and archaeology to a rich story of human life. Highly recommended.
Stephen King - The Stand
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This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.
And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.
In 1978 Stephen King published The Stand, the novel that is now considered to be one of his finest works. But as it was first published, The Stand was incomplete, since more than 150,000 words had been cut from the original manuscript.
Now Stephen King's apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil has been restored to its entirety. The Stand : The Complete And Uncut Edition includes more than five hundred pages of material previously deleted, along with new material that King added as he reworked the manuscript for a new generation. It gives us new characters and endows familiar ones with new depths. It has a new beginning and a new ending. What emerges is a gripping work with the scope and moral comlexity of a true epic.
For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are reading The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.
Wilbur Smith - River God
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For Tanus, the fair-haired young lion of a warrior, the gods have decreed that he will lead Egypt's army in a bold attempt to reunite the Kingdom's shared halves. But Tanus will have to defy the same gods to attain the reward they have forbidden him, an object more prized than battle's glory: possession of the Lady Lostris, a rare beauty with skin the color of oiled ceder--destined for the adoration of a nation, and the love of one extraordinary man.
International bestselling author Wilbur Smith, creator of two dozen highly acclaimed novels, draws readers into a magnificent, richly imagined saga. Exploding with all the drama, mystery and rage of a bygone time, River God is a masterpiece from a storyteller at the height of his powers.
Dean Ray Koontz - Fear Nothing
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Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight Bay. For Christopher has made a strange peace with a very rare genetic disorder shared by only one thousand other Americans, a disorder that leaves him extremely vulnerable to the light. His life is filled with the fascinating rituals of one who must embrace the dark. It is only at night that he is truly free. An then he witnesses a murder in the night--a murder only he can solve.
David Morrell - The Fraternity of the Stone
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Drew Maclane was a star agent--until the day the killing had to stop. He withdrew and for six years lived the life of a hermit in a monastery. But someone has tracked him down, leaving a trail of corpses. Someone who knows all about him, who knows how to draw him back into that electrifying world where no one is as he seems, and where life's most horrifying and harrowing game is played....
James Clavell - Shôgun
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A bold English adventuer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in a mighty saga of a time and place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust and the struggle for power.
Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth
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Ken Follett, internationally-acclaimed master of split-second suspense, author of six #1 bestsellers, reaches beyond the expected to achieve his most brilliant and remarkable novel. The epic story of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England and the lives of the people entwined with it and each other is a sensuous, enduring narrative, and a gripping tale of faith, ambition, bloodshed and betrayal.