I'll reiterate anything by Ludlum.
If you're willing to go a little more sci-fi, then the Bean side of the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card is a must. Most of the sci-fi stuff in that's only in the first of the Bean novels anyway. You'll need high tolerance for Uberkids, though.
The Cryptonomicon might fit the bill. It's not so much on the vernacular, and is split about 1/3 modern business intrigue, 1/3 WW2 cryptography, and 1/3 about a WW2 marine. Yes, they do end up being part of the same story.
And if you're willing to go way Sci-fi into cyberpunk, you basically defined the entire fucking genre, as far as spies and conspiracies go.

 

RA Salvatore's style is pretty good, if a little stiff. It's the kind of book you read in a car, trying to get distracted while there are five baby cousins trying to pull your hair and drooling all over the seats.

Can anything be better than the Dresden Files? Even a trilogy by the same author? I'm a little skeptical.

 

A really good book I read was named "Extreme Justice", I don't remember author's name. And my favorite author is John Grisham (he writes law books, but they're not about law the whole time, just packed with other stuff with it), then I remember reading the "Goosebumps" books when I was 10 or 11, those were fun.

 

The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1984 by George Orwell

There are a lot more, but these are the ones which popped into my head, right away.

 

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

 

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind.
Such a great book, very smart, very bloody. So very good.

 

Ender's Game/Shadow (both) ~ Orson Scott Card
Shogun ~ James Clavell

 

shimbumi by trevian

 

John Marco's The Tyrants and Kings Trilogy is definatly worth a look in my opinion. Not that much magic, it is far to powerful to be used and is more of a divine gift than something learned from a book, but a well done story with plenty of character development (and death and mental torture). At the very least this series is an excellent time waster.

 

Pretty much anything by Stephen Hunter. Especially Point of Impact
Black Light and Time to Hunt. These three novels tell the story of Bob Lee Swagger, a former Vietnam era sniper. There is a lot of military jargon, especailly concerning firearms and the art of sniping. In addition to the actio, there are some really twisted conspiracies in these stories. It should also be noted that the movie "Shooter" was based off of Point of Impact and is a decent adaptation of the book.

 

Saved the best for last I see

I second the recommendation for the above, the Song of Ice and Fire series is without a doubt the epitome of the genre, unfortunately, magic plays a much more subtle role than series like the Wheel of Time but its certainly more entertaining than the later.

Might I also venture to suggest Dragonlance if you have not already read it, I personally find the universe more cohesive than Forgotten Realm and more enjoyable than any of Salvatore's work. The Chronicles Trilogy containing Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning would be a great place to start. Magic plays a much more important role here which i believe would suite your taste, plus Raistlin Majere is just plain cool.

 

I'd strongly recommend the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. The story is about the bastard son of the former heir to a throne. He’s taught the skill sets of an assassin as well as the royal magic, the Skill. I've never read better characterization then I read in this story. Seriously, trust me and try it out.

I have a few comments on series others have mentioned.

Eragon: It's crap, as others have stated. However, the second book does improve a bit on the first, although not to the point that I'd recommend the series.

The Wheel of Time: Ugh. Don't get me started. I thought the first four or five books were great. After that, it goes downhill. It's a perfect example of a strong beginning, and then killing the setup and dragging the story into mud.

The story gets very repetitive and boring; character and plot development slows down to a crawl. There are thousand page novels where absolutely nothing happens and then the next novel happens concurrently with that one, talking about other characters that almost nothing was happening to, so the series felt like it wasn't moving forward at all. He also spends an insane number of pages on minor characters while neglecting the major ones. I don't care about the minor characters.

I also wasn’t very impressed with the characterization, which is a big thing for me. Almost every woman in the books has the exact same personality and it is that of an annoying, insecure bitch. Seriously, why Rand would want three of them when he could have none is beyond me. I'm sure he could find some volunteers from the Maidens to take care of his physical desires.

It really is too bad, because the series started out so strongly that it makes the rest of the series seem worse.

Anita Blake: Interesting, but as the series progresses the main character is portrayed increasingly as a Mary Sue. Not to mention major deus ex machina's occur in almost every book. The books all use a similar formula which can get tiresome after awhile.

 

Farseer Trilogy = fail

Honestly, it was so boring that I just about fell asleep.

Anita Blake = win

Though that may be partly because of the copious amounts of smut, it is also due to the excellent writing. Blake is not a mary sue, by any measure.
Deus ex machina...there are a fair number, but its all fairly well explained away with previously mentioned things. Is not like the example of "Oh my car has run out of fuel in the middle of the desert, it shall now run on sand." Its more like "Oh my car has run out of fuel in the middle of the desert, but using the incredibly amazingly unique thing that was shown in the earlier portions of the story I shall now make it run on sand."

 

On the Farseer Trilogy we shall have to merely disagree unless you would like to expand upon why you found it boring as I clearly did with Wheel of Time.

I think Anita Blake is as clear a Mary Sue as I've ever seen in published works. She shares the authors fears, basic physical characteristics, religious beliefs, moral/political opinions, and they have a similar past including the same education/degree, etc. She is so beautiful that she doesn't use makeup but is still more attractive than almost every other woman, extremely competent at everything she does, possesses unique necromantic magical power, is skilled with both firearms and martial arts, gains new powers at the drop of a hat just when it's needed, is universally respected, and almost every male in the series is strongly attracted to her above all others and not necessarily because she's beautiful.

She has and does it all. She is unique, talented, very intelligent, highly resilient, astoundingly attractive, the center of the books universe, has a tragic past that includes being discriminated against, and is portrayed as sympathetic and loveable to boot. She bears a striking resemblance to her author in many ways as listed in the prior paragraph. If she's not a Mary Sue, then I'm not sure who is.

 

Accidental double post. Delete please.

 

Kind of surprised that no one has mention The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. In my opinion by the latest books it is actually better then A Song of Ice and Fire though both are great series.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen follows around many different characters through multiple worlds as they each play out power struggles, and as the books go on you begin to see the sheer enormity and genius of the series because everything starts to come together. The series keeps getting better as it goes on. The first book is Gardens of the Moon which is a little slow at the beginning but gets significantly better.

 

Quick question, are they in any sort of chronological order? I just downloaded 'Freehold' and bought the ebook version of 'The Weapon' and i really want to read the latter first, however I do not want to run into spoiler for the former book as they are both set in the same 'verse and Freehold looks to be chronologically before The Weapon.

Thanks for the recommendation btw, even though I didn't request it, I was thoroughly intrigued by your summery.

 

There's only one spoiler in The Weapon, in the very last chapter we get a brief mention about what happened in the last chapter of Freehold. Nothing earth shattering and you really don't understand the significance of it until you read Freehold so it doesn't matter. It's just one of the things that tie the two books together and remind you that it's all one story.

 

Thanks for the tip

*goes off to read*

 

I would also reccomend "Eye of the needle".