hmm.. well out of my bookcase, id choose..
1) Vikram Seth - just amazing, written in the style of Pushkin's - Eugene Onegin but modern and the language/poetry is really something with a very emotive plot as well... really a masterpiece.
2) John Steinbeck - Cannery Row - short story but also, very nicely written.
3) Jonathen Franzen - The Corrections - Another modern classic... sorta like a modern day victorian novel - a big social panorama and indepth characters and v.v.good story.
4) Lermontov - A hero of our time. The only story that this Russian poet wrote, and in typical C19 Russian style, it has some beautifully drawn moments.
5) Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov - Another C19 Russian author and this epitomises the psychological realism and indepth characterisation of the genre, very good but it is long and possibly tedious in places.
6) Turgenev - First love - Last of my Russian authors - this is short and very poetic and very nicely written. This and 'A hero of our time' are very complimentary.
7) Marius Brill - Making love - Very postmodern and wacky - the story is told by the book itself who is kidnapped! No-one seems to have heard of this book although it was published only last year but it is immense and extremely witty. However quite a lot of literary in-jokes so some of it may fly over your head if your not a lit. student. But really very good and a very clever plot-structure.
8) J.G. Ballad - Crash - just for the hardcore in you
9) William Burroughs - Naked lunch - just recently started on Burroughs and he's a world unto himself, very bizarre but interesting.. speak to Benway who is forum resident expert on Burroughs
10) Don De Lilo - Underworld... big, epic, modern panorama of American society, very well written, he's one of the current stable of older, living American authors (along with Updike and Mailer)
11) Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint - bloody funny - a 230-odd page rant against his repressed childhood.
12) Sci-fi front - Peter F. Hamilton - Nights Dawn Trilogy - this is immense, each book is over 1000 pages long and the story is vast, but if you like sci-fi, its absolutely amazing and full of sex and violence on a vast scale.. rarrghh.. a great relief from all the Russian sentimentality.
hope any of this is useful