Shards of Honor

A coworker highly recommends the Vorkosigan series by Lois McNuster Bujold. Shards of Honor is the first book in the series. The series is the story of two generations of a family in a distant future where Earth is a part but not central. The first book in the series deals with the clash of people from two very different cultures and their ability to love one another. It also raises a lot of questions about honor. These were the first adult books my coworker remembers reading and enjoying. She liked the series because it was character-driven and funny. She also enjoyed the scientific and cultural aspects of the world Bujold created and comparing it to the things she was studying in history.

The Dark Tower

The link above takes you to a boxed set of the first four books in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. My husband has read all of these (mostly listening to them on audio) and enjoyed them but the intensity one of my friends from my old job has about these books is what made me decide to include them here. He once remarked that if he were to ever get a tattoo, it would be a symbol of the Dark Tower. Since not many people get tattoos to commemorate books, this got my attention. He recommends reading the first two books of the series before making up your mind about them, as he feels the first book is a prologue that sets up some of the action in the other books. These books are entries in "road books" such as Lord of the Rings (which he feels these books are modern equivalent too) where a disparate group of people meet up and begin traveling together to achieve a common goal --getting to the Dark Tower and defeating the Crimson King among other bad guys (including the Man in Black-- no, not Johnny Cash). Many characters are very easy to identify with and King makes them feel very real. For King fans, these books bring in several characters from his other works and King himself appears as a character.