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

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

To add my own tiny voice:

1) the last book that really blew me away was "The Light Ages" by Iain MacLeod - "alternative England" with Fifth Element and lots of industrial-Age griminess. The sequel is a bit of a mess, though.
Though I haven't read it myself, I am led to believe Perdita (?) Street Station by China Mieville is very good in the same vein.

ii) Aberwyswyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce - very, very funny Raymond Chandler spoof set in south Wales.

iii) anything by Neil Gaiman (but then I'm sure you knew that already)

iv) "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke - weighty but ultimately rewarding (more alternative Englandery, this time with explicit magic, and jane Austen period setting). And if you get bore of it, it makes a very good brick.

v) Iain Banks - always reliable. The Crow Road is probably the best start-point of the non-genre...

And so on...