Here's a list of my favorite "storytellers". Not fine literature, but fine story telling. I consider Stephen King to be among one of the finest story tellers of our time, though it's his older stuff, the longer novels, and his collections of short stories I find best. Favorites are The Stand: uncut version, and The Bachman Books (four short stories he wrote under the pseudonym Bachman). The Shining is great, but a completely different book than the movie. In fact, the only good Stephen King movie WAS the Shining, but that's because Kubrick directed it and knew the difference between film making and novel writing. Conversely, it's the adaptation King himself hates the most. King wrote a zombie book, Cell, where the cell phones turn people into zombies (kinda like how it is now, only worse).
Ken Follet is a good one too that covers a plethora of subjects. Pillars of the Earth is a FINE novel, if you haven't read it you need to --highly recommended. My mom and I loved it so much we used to think it should be part of the literature curriculum in high schools. A Place Called Freedom is a good one and Where Eagles Dare was about H. Ross Perot hiring ex-SF guys to rescue his employees during a hostage crisis.
I didn't like Clancy all that much, but I DID like Robert Ludlum a LOT. If you like Clancy, chances are you'll like Ludlum, you know, Bourne series, but Legacy was done by somebody else; the book's in the bedroom and wife's asleep, sorry. I liked all of Ludlum's stuff.
Smilla's Sense of Snow is just a good book. Native Speaker is another one, won lots of awards, was one I had to read for a college class several years ago. Forrest Gump is a great book and different than the movie (okay, every book is different than the movie!) and the same writer also wrote Better Times Than These, based on his experience in Vietnam. Catch 22 --a super classic for any military vet of any era!
Sure, all these are old and if you've read 'em all, sorry, but that's what came to mind when you said "good novels".
