Guessed authors

[j4]

It's my mum's birthday in August, and she usually has a book wish-list which she gives to my dad, my sister and me in case we can't think of anything else to buy her. Now while I don't really mind buying stuff off the list, a) it seems a bit daft given that she's quite happy to buy them for herself anyway, and b) there's always a lot of faff between the three of us as to who buys what, sometimes resulting in duplicate copies. I'd quite like to get her something that she wouldn't buy for herself, i.e. something she might not even know exists, but should like anyway.

So, knowing that there are a fair few SF/Fantasy geeks reading this, I'm turning to you guys for help. Things I know she has read and enjoyed recently:

[edited to include suggestions that I know she's already got/read]

• Pratchett (funny how it's always the obvious ones you forget to mention)
• Katherine Kerr (? I think she's got some of these)
• Terry Goodkind
• Ursula Le Guin
• Mercedes Lackey
• Raymond Feist
• Julia Gray, The Guardian Cycle series
• Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time series
• Guy Gavriel Kay, pretty much everything AFAICT
• Robin Hobb, "Assassin" / "Fool" series
• Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Sheri S. Tepper
• Barbara Hambly
• Elizabeth Moon
• Diana Wynne Jones
• "Bridget Jones" :-)

Can anybody recommend anything that someone who's liked all these might enjoy? (Apologies in advance if I end up saying "I think she's got/read that", I can't remember everything that's on her shelves...) Ideally I want to avoid authors she's already buying everything by, because it's just too easy to duplicate stuff.

NB it doesn't have to be Fantasy (you know I don't really do genre anyway!) but she doesn't read that much SF and I've not had that much success finding non-genre things that she likes... at least, I lent her a huge stack of books a while ago and she wasn't wildly enthusiastic about any of them. Open to suggestions, though.

Comments

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

I *heart* Diane Wynne Jones (and she has written so much stuff that you can probably find something she doesn't already have without too much effort too, Amazon marketplace is good for out of print stuff).

On the grounds that anyone else who loves DWJ might also love other things I love, I also love Ursula Le Guin. Not that the styles are the same in any way, I think it is more to do with intelligent, well written stuff not about 'real life'. The Earthsea stuff is her most fantasy, least sci fi, work but also what she's most likely to have already come across. Maybe she hasn't already found things like 'Worlds of Exile and Illusion' 'The Left Hand of Darkness' 'The Lathe of Heaven' or 'The Dispossessed' though?

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid she's already got all the Le Guin I'd be likely to be able to find... and I thought "The Left Hand of Darkness" was required reading for anybody who claimed to have ever read SF/Fantasy (or is that just in Cambridge?) ;-)

There may be some DWJ she doesn't have but I know she just got rid of "Howl's Moving Castle" and, um, another one (in the same series? Looked like, anyway...) on the grounds that she probably wouldn't bother reading them a second time, so I suspect I may have mined that seam to the limit.

Sorry!