( * = recommended by somebody I know )

Science Fiction

When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger
Helliconia Spring, by Brian Aldiss
*Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
The Affirmation and The Separation, by Christopher Priest
The Terminal Experiment, by Robert Sawyer
Time Future, by Maxine McArthur
Gridlinked, by Neal Asher
Raising the Stones, by Sheri Tepper
The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Tales of Pirx the Pilot, by Stanislaw Lem
The Golden Age, by John Wright
A Year in the Linear City, by Paul Di Filippo

Fantasy

Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Cary
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis
The Other Wind, by Ursula K Le Guin
Titus Groans, by Mervyn Peake
Gloriana, by Michael Moorcock
Fire Logic, by Laurie Marks
Ombria in Shadow, by Patricia McKillip
Sabriel, by Garth Nix

Horror

Fiction, General

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
A Death in the Family, by James Agee
The Magus, by John Fowles
Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marques
The Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin
A Confederacy of Dunces, by Jonathan Kennedy O'Toole
The Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
The Corrections, by Jonathan Frazen
The Ship of Fools, by Gregory Normington
Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland

Non-Fiction

John Adams, by David McCullough
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
From a Logical Point of View, by WVO Quine
A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer