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Dresden Files, must have read the whole series three times now.
The Warlord Chronicles.
Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. Awesome characterization, but a bit lengthy!
HP Lovecraft.
The Dancers at the End of Time series is quite good. The Hollow Lands was my favourite of the original three books.
Can't go wrong with Wheel of Time (final book #14 due next spring). I also am a big fan of Song of Fire and Ice. Book 1 "Game of Thrones" is a series on HBO right now.
Neil Gaiman's stuff is really good (Neverwhere, American Gods)
Twilight, Vampire novels, books with shirtless men (AKA any book on the romance isle)... You indeed asked for something at the pinnacle of it's genre.
All jokes aside, I suggest Wheel of Time if your into long readings of piecing lore together it's a win.
I also reccomend H.P. Luvcraft and discworld
William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) are awesome if you like cyberpunk and coolness, also Johnny Mnemonic by Gibson is a good short story (plus it has the best character ever: a heroin addicted cyberdolphin hacker named Jones)
Also Huxley's Brave New World is a classic.
Ignore all the shit posted above (except Gibson), and read:
Perdido Street Station, and anything else by China Mieville.
The Darkness That Comes Before, and the books that follow, by R. Scott Bakker.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and his numerous others.
The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, an excellent 'Weird West' type novel.
Oh man, I am so glad you asked. There is only one book I would recommend for an EfU player, and I recommend it for all players. Every single one of you should read
The Count of Monte Cristo
I'd like to toss out a nod towards Tad William's "Otherland" - It's an interesting sci-fi/VR (cyberpunk I guess) series by an otherwise mostly Fantasy author that I really enjoyed reading.
"The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch is utterly fantastic.
"Shogun" by James Clavell is a tour de force.
For epic fiction, obviously the Song of Ice and Fire series by GRRM and the Praxis trilogy by Walter Jon Williams are good bets. So is the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton.
Titus Groan and Gormenghast, in that order, by the illustrious Mervyn Peake. Don't bother with the third book of the series. Also, having just finished Perdido Street Station and The Scar, I second 9lives' recommendation for Mieville.
Finally, read Baudolino by Umberto Eco. The book is worth it for its first chapter alone.
I echo various suggestions above.
Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber are both splendid, and have left palpable influence upon EFU.
A Game Of Thrones!!!! I would be remiss to recommend otherwise. Read all 5 books and then join the hate waiting for the final one.
Echo a lot of these suggestions.
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell is pretty A+ for Mistlocke vibes. While he is pretty much a pulp writer for teenage boys and middle aged men, this series is Cornwell at his best. Misty Avalon, the Battle of Camlann and prophecy. Very Mlockey.
The Second Apocalypse series by R. Scott Bakker is also pretty seminal for me. I wrote the Order before I read his stuff, but the guy pretty much wrote anything I'd ever want to years before I ever knew how. Bakker is a big influence, and I would be willing to put up with a lifetime of snarky IRC swipes about ripping him off if it meant you'd all read and appreaciate this series.
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Anything by Ted Dekker. I started with the trilogy of "Saint", "Sinner", "Showdown". The Circle series (Black, White, Red, Green - Not sure of the order now) is pretty good too.
Thirding Mieville, and I'd also like to recommend Glen Cook's Black Company series.
Despite the plethora of phenomenal suggestions already posted, I'm going to throw out The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. First book is Way of Shadows. It's one of the few newer fantasy series that's really been able to impress me, and I'd certainly recommend that anyone at least give it a chance.
The Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon is an excellent trilogy that chronicles the journey from farm girl to soldier to paladin.
I'm a big fan of Gaiman as well, American Gods and Neverwhere are both good reads.
Recently been reading some Heinlein, right now about 2/3 through The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Perdido Street Station Is the best fantasy book I have read. I tend to prefer science fiction.
I'd recommend A Fire Upon the Deep and Hyperion very highly for "space opera" SF.
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
A Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
The Belgariad Series by David Eddings
The Malloreon Series by David Eddings
The Dreamers Series by David Eddings
The Book of Joby by Mark Ferrari
The Hollows Series by Kim Harrison is a guilty pleasure of mine.
William Gibson's Neuromancer. Also the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradburry
I found the Thraxas series awesome. The books tell the adventures of a detective fallen in disgrace, in his fourties, alcoholic, but nonetheless rather efficient in a world that ressembles mostly the typical "medieval-fantasy world" but in some aspects ressemble our own.
The Kingkiller Chronicles are utterly fantastic and a novelty of our time.
Jim Butcher's series:
Dresden Files, a modern-day noirish private detective series with a wizard as the protagonist.
Codex Alera, a fantasy setting about a Roman civilisation that disappeared into another world and discovered magic. There's excellent politics plots and stuff like discovering Roman ruins and people not believing the use of cranes and siege engines rather than earth elementals.
Ken McLeod, The Star Fraction.
A cyberpunk-ish mystery/revolution novel set in a Britain filled with tiny micro-states, officially registered terrorist groups, and technology-policing Men in Black.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (//%22http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant%22) by Steven R. Donaldson (9 books)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (//%22http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?p=1608%22) by Lo Kuan-chung (2 books)