I am just going to cut-and-paste a reading recommendation I made to a classmate (minor edits to protect the innocent):
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Martian by Andy Weir
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
The Girl Who Would Be King by Kelly Thompson
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
vN by Madeline Ashby
iD by Madeline Ashby
The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
The Dead Key by D. M. Pulley
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Heart Collector by Jacques Vandroux
Bones Burnt Black by Stephen Euin Cobb
Matthew, here is a short list of (not terrible) books I have read recently. Kind of a mix here, and I didn't include any of the non-fic stuff I read in between, though there was a very good biography of J. R. R. Tolkien I read, which gave me the impetus to tackle The Silmarillion (and then LoTR again)...
Anyway, Little Brother has to do with over-reach of government entities.
Gillian Flynn just got her book Gone Girl made into a movie, but I think it's the weakest of her three, so I didn't recommend it here. I think Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones would be in the same category as Flynn...
Jeffrey Eugenides is a freak, and his two novels are not for the light-hearted (and sex features heavily in both these books). That's it for the straight Fiction category. The other books are variously scifi/fan... well, The Dead Key is more of a thriller, as is The Heart Collector.
The Martian is good old-fashioned Hard sci-fi, vetted by actual NASA scientists, apparently. Bones Burnt Black is in a similar vein, though with a murder mystery thrown in for good measure. The Golem and the Jinni is a fantasy novel which has kind of a steampunk feel, though it doesn't really fall into that genre... The Alchemy of Stone would be, though.
Ancillary Justice is an awesome freshman scifi novel (it got the triple-crown of science fiction awards: Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke); the sequel isn't quite as good, but I am hoping it will make a good interlude between the first and the third of the series (maybe later this year).
The Girl Who Would Be King is a fresh look at a super-powered girl (or two), and Asby's novels are kind of post-cyberpunk... another "it might happen" dystopian near-future take on robots.
These are just the best of a long list of things I've read in the past couple years, I hope you find something worthwhile to read.
