Lazier Than Thou said:
I've been trying to find such books as well. I got royally sick of unending stories and having to wait months and months and months just to get the next in a series of books is horribly annoying. Freakin' Dresden Files, makin' me want to read.
Damn that Jim Butcher and him being able to write awesome captivating stuff! And
Changes ends with the worst cliffhanger of all time.
OF ALL TIME!
OT: Well, you didn't really specify anything, so you are safe to go with pretty much anything from Stephen King. He's a cool dude and has really good stuff. If I had to name a couple of them, then
The Dead Zone and
Firestarter come immediately to mind. But, as I said, mostly anything else works. Most of his work is horror and mystery, obviously, the other part incorporates horror elements to various degrees.
But what I would certainly recommend is the
Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (who is behind the book Jurassic Park and the TV show E.R.). Really, really good. It's one of my favourite books ever. In it, scientists try to contain an extraterrestrial bacteria infection but it's nothing really as fancy as you'd immediately think - the infected don't sprout tentacles or turn into zombies or anything remotely like that. The infection itself isn't even self-aware or malicious. For all intents and purposes it's just a normal, albeit new for Earth, micro-organisms. The issue is that they are new for Earth and really dangerous.
If you're into sci-fi, then I'd recommend
Strata by Terry Pratchett (it's not tied to the Discworld at all). A nice take on some of the sci-fi tropes. Mostly on the whole "predecessors who went mysteriously extinct" one (think the Protheans in ME).
Speaking of Terry Pratchett, a lot of the Discworld books are not really part of "series" as such, and can work standalone. I'd really recommend reading at least
Small Gods. That one is truly standalone - no recurring characters from there. Other books form mini-series who share the same protagonist(s) (for example,
Going Postal and
Making Money) and in their case, it's recommended to read the older ones first but not at all required. And, of course, the Discworld is full of light-hearted humour and fantasy. Also, most of the books are dirty cheap on Amazon/eBay or second hand in general.
Away from comedy and back to sci-fi (sorry, most of my background is there) Ray Bradury's
Fahrenheit 451 is nice and people often refer to it even if they haven't read it, which is a shame. Think of it as a softer
1984 which is another book people too often reference without reading first and that is a shame, too - it's not a really long book it can be finished quite fast. Other than those, I quite like Isaac Asimov's
The Gods Themselves. But not as much as
The End of Eternity - that's probably my favourite book by Asimov. And speaking of him, he also wrote one of my favourite short stories Belief [http://coteart.com/Belief.html].
And back to horror again, if you're really into it, you cannot go wrong with the
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski.
Sorry I can't think of any more - my book collection is not with me and I can't remember the exact titles of some or their authors (so I can look them up). I keep thinking about a really good book which I thought was called
Goblin Farm by Arthur Clarke (or Robert Heinlein) but apparently neither is this the name nor it's written by either of them. I can't even describe the plot well, aside from it being similarly paced like in the
Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is to say things were going weird and with time they kept making less sense (near the end, stuff just started time travelling or teleporting randomly. The protagonist stopped being impressed by this).
WTF? The forum didn't like the CAPTHA I typed in so the new one is "don't stop". All right, I suppose, in that case I can add one more - I always liked
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome. Lots of humour in that one.
