Neal Stephenson - Snowcrash might be a good choice. Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench gang (though this might have come out before 1980). Don't know if those are mass market enough, but they ain't hoity-toity enough for the NY Times...

The Big Nowhere, James Ellroy. (Think Ellroy does the psycho killer thing better than Harris, Dan, though his writing gets increasingly unreadable)

I have been reading less modern fiction over the years, as perfectly respectable potboilers from the past are available for far less than the $9.00 one has to pay for paper backs these days. I'd take Wilkie Collins No Name or Armadale (or The Moonstone or Woman In White) as page turner fiction over almost any of the mass murder books one encounters these days.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Though published 27 years ago and only the first book in a five-part trilogy, these qualities surely distinguish it from its worthy competitors in this category.

Neuromancer, William Gibson, 1986.

It's still got me thinking.

"Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card.

My favorite, *The Name of the Rose*, by Umberto Eco, technically misses the cutoff by a year.

Maybe it's all the kerfuffle about The Davinci Code, but I really really liked Foucault's Pendulum.

Does Tom Robbins' "Skinny Legs and All" qualify as "mass-market"?

Dan Simmons duology Ilium and Olympos

For values of "greatest" approximating "most important," this is another vote for Neuromancer. Si monumentum requiris circumspice

Even though Count Zero is a better book.

I love the suggestions so far, looks like you draw a SciFi crowd, Professor. Let me add Clancy's Red Storm Rising, which apparently has the requisite length and scope to be considered good, but lacks metaphors.

I would vote for Neal Stephenson's System of the World series, along with the companion Cryptonomicon as my greatest in the last 25 years. I know it's long and really just an action adventure series, but anything that can force me to think about early monitary and trade policy is a great work.

Why is Jane Smiley given such prominence by the NYTimes? Puff reviews of her drearily tendentious novellettes plus frequent printing of her snarky letters to the editor on US politics. Is there anyone on these boards who has ever opened one of her books, let alone toughed it out to the conclusion?

What is really depressing about the list is the inclusion of Philip Roth's The Plot Against the America. A real-throw away.

Anything by Terry Pratchett

Blindness, by Jose Saramago. More fantastical than sci fi, vulgar in parts, but compelling throughout.

Hm. "The Stand," in its original less-bloated version.

Just b/c it's not cited above. "Neuromancer" is another I've read to pieces. And what about "The Winds of War"?

Perfume by Patrick Susskind

Anything by Allan Furst.

I think the greater condemnation of the NYT list is not how many of them you've read, but how many of those you haven't read you want to. I read Beloved for a class that dealt with "recent" Literature Nobel Laureates, and found it to be the worst book we read (Mahfouz's Children of Gebelaawi was my favorite).

I think the most important American mass-market PB of the past quarter-century is probably The Hunt for Red October, but my choice was the best is probably Cryptonomicon. Note, though, that this is an American list, and thus excludes The Publishing Juggernaut To Crush All Others, in which case I'd have to really think about it.

Neuromancer is not a bad choice, but I have to go with Han Meng above.
I'd narrow it down to "Witches Abroad". The idea of 'narrative causality', i.e. stories are alive and eat events to provide energy, will leave you never reading a newspaper the same way again. They become a sort of short term, Darwinian space, where stories compete to envelope the events of the day and starve competing stories to the back pages.
For those who have trouble with stories with witches, fairy godmothers, voodoo, and zombies can turn to the nearly as excellent "The Truth", but really, why settle.
Mawado

In no particular order:

Neuromancer - William Gibson - turned everything upside down.

Any of the Prey novels by John Camp, although I think Sudden Prey may be his strongest. Taken as a whole, the series is an awesome accomplishment.

Fire Upon the Deep/A Deepness In the Sky - Vernor Vinge...conceptually, though unlikely, the Zones of Thought are amazing, and, in some ways, perhaps the shape of things to come? I like to think so.

The Stand/It - The first for its evocation of the human spirit, the second for its evocation of mid-century middle America. Although it was Maine, everybody of a certain age grew up there before the world went mad.

Dreams of Flesh and Sand - W. T. Quick (Well, what the hell....)

I have to agree with both "Ender's Game" and "Foucault's Pendulum", though the books are about as dissimilar as is possible in fiction.

I'd vote for any of the Aubery/Maturin novels by Patric O'Brian (tho' Master and Commander was published 27 years ago, IIRC).

Just to throw in some Canadian content, how about Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler's last novel? Funny and poignant.

The "Flashman" novels by GM Fraser, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (that one may be over 25 years old, but, oh well.

Anything by Christopher Brookmyre

I'll take Terry Pratchett, in the "The Truth" as one of the best mass market books.

For me. Call Of The Wild.

What's the Publishing Juggernaut to crush all others?

One more vote for Cryptonomicon and The Stand. I'd add Grisham's 'A Time to Kill' to the truly mass-market audience and 'The Cardinal of the Kremlin' to the Clancy list.

Dohh.... You said 25 years. Then... hmmm... Scalzi's latest Sci Fi would do it for me. Specifically "Old Man's War"

Mark Helprin: "A Winters Tale"...
Got me started on Helprin, and I haven't missed a book of his since.

I'd have to go with either Ender's Game or Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World.

Notice that many of these books, like the Flashman series, *used* to be mass-market but have since been upsized to trade paperbacks.

The reasons are twofold. (1) Trade costs more. (2) Trade books aren't stripped, whereas mass-market books that don't sell have their covers stripped off & returned to the publisher, while the book is trashed. Thus, backlist books like Flashman that move slowly but steadily are being issued as trades.

Bridges of Madison County

I'm gonna have to second on Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" books. Those are amazing. I'm just waiting (and waiting and waiting) for him to finish the darn things.

I also have to say that I thoroughly enjoy anything by Michael Crichton (like "State of Fear") and Jeffrey Deaver (like "The Devil's Teardrop").

"Literature" is too stilted and high-and-mighty for my tastes. Give me a good mass-market novel any day of the week

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
and(though it doesnt meet the 25 year rule I couldn't resist)
A Distant Mirror - Barbara Tuchman

I'd recommend any of these as enjoyable reads:

Phantoms - Dean Koontz

It - Stephen King

Still Life with Crows - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Robert Jordan? ...the horror... Terrible terrible waste of shelf space.

Re: foucault's pendulum: it is a sublime book, but a bit intellectual to be considered "mass market". Nonetheless, it does fit Dan's definition, and so it gets my vote.

If it didn't, however, I'd suggest the following:
Gun, With Occasional Music- Jonathan Lethem
and
Little, Big- John Crowley

Not in response to the main post, but in response to thibaud at May 22, 2006 08:53 PM, I feel the need to say that Jane Smiley's "The Greenlanders" was terrific.

Any one of the fine "Executioner" novels of Don Pendleton, but I always thought #16, SICILIAN SLAUGHTER, a particularly fine piece of literature.

I like to read book reviews but find the New York Times reviews as mind numbing as the books they review. Count me as another lover of the so-called potboiler. And I read (or listen) to a lot of them. My favorites of the past 25 years:
Crytonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie King
Kiss of the Bees - JA Jance
The Poet - Michael Connelly
Anything by Phil Rickman (aka Will Kingdom)

"The Color Purple" and/or "Fried Green Tomatoes" -

If you prefer Stephen King, it would have to be "The Green Mile", an instant classic, containing morals within morals.

I'm afaid it's outside your 25-year cutoff, but the Illuminatus! trilogy (by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson) was a big influence on me.

In the last 25 years? I'd vote for Diamond Age (by Neil Stephenson), though I see from comments above me that Crytonomicon and Snow Crash are also popular.

I think it was only released in trade paperback and hardback form, but _The Engineer of Human Souls_ by Josef Skvorecky is almost certainly my favorite single book of the last twenty-five years.

The prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.

And of the 25 years before that, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The last line of which is utterly devastating.

"In place of the need to master hard knowledge or brute facts, there is folk wisdom; in place of science, animism; in place of the strict father, the self-sufficient matriarchy, first of Baby Suggs', and later Sethe's, house; and finally, in place of a man's world, the hallowed sorority of women, especially women of color—though on this last, Morrison does not insist too heavily."

I don't need to read "beloved" to experience these things, all I have to do is visit the nearest housing project!

Elmore Leonard - Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky

Of the past 25 years?

It's either To Reign in Hell or Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill, both by Steven K. Z. Brust.

The 25 years before that? Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Anson Heinlein.

Only women's and minority studies' majors actually like Beloved. It's a horrible novel about a woman tortured by an unremitting past. There's nothing escapist or redeeming in it. What the heck are paperbacks for if not escapism?

Bilwick: LOL, ROFL. Haven't thought of Mack Bolan in eons. I was always partial to #8, CHICAGO WIPE-OUT -- guess I'm just a sucker for stories of the home town. Sadly that's out of the window (1971). So I'll have to punt and vote for Stephen Coonts, FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER.

The Publishing Juggernaut to Crush All Others is the Harry Potter novels. When USAToday did their list of the best-selling books over the last 20 years at the time of the 20th anniversary of their book list, the 5 of the novels that had been released at that point occupied 5 of the 6 top slots. No, they're not American, and none really stands alone as well as, say, Cryptonomicon, but the series will actually end, unlike Jordan's Wheel of Time novels.

I'm with Daze--give me anything by Elmore Leonard. Tishomingo Blues may be my favorite so far, although I'm nowhere near through the whole library.

Last 25 years?

Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

The 25 before that?

Lin Carter, Titan of the World's End

Alan Moore's The Watchmen, or for sth. more conventional, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. The Watchmen was a great step forward for the quality of, and acceptance of, the graphic novel. It has cult status but also sells in high numbers. As for Jurassic Park, it combines a page-turning pulpy quality with some genuinely interesting ideas. Moreover, it spawned perhaps the last true blockbuster Spielberg will make.

Christopher Moore, _Lamb_ (technically only released in cut-priced trade paperback, but I'm counting it)

Terry Pratcett, _Small Gods_ or possibly _Night Watch_

John Varley, _Steel Beech_

I've tried to read most of the books on the list and of the top three I've completed and enjoyed Beloved and Blood Meridian. Much as I liked DeLillo's White Noise and Libra, I've never been able to get to the halfway point before putting Underworld back on the shelf.

I'd recommend all the Cormac McCarthy novels without reservation, well if you don't mind violence, and Beloved with the reservation that having seen the movie probably will have a negative effect in terms of how it is structured. I can't find a source now, but I read at the time that Oprah Winfrey first approached Jodie Foster, who'd done her senior thesis on Toni Morrison, about directing the movie and Foster passed, telling her the novel couldn't be adapted.

It's actually a pretty decent list given what could be on there, but Ender's Game and Snow Crash would be one-two on my list.

I hate to repeat the choices of others, but...

Pratchett's The Truth is just amazing.

Gibson's three cyberpunk books seem to me to make up one extended riff--Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

If you'll allow something older than 25 years--Rex Stout's The Doorbell Rang, about overreach by the FBI, published in (I think) 1964. And a terrific mystery.

Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" (although I'm still not sure how much of the book is fiction).

For fiction prognostication, I'll take Clancy's "Debt of Honor" (followed by the "Sum of All Fears").

Hunt for Red October or Little, Big (both of which I read in mass-market paperback editions). I even knew a communist in college who nonetheless loved Hunt for Red October.

I have a question for the Ender's Game proponents. It probably sounds insulting, but I really don't intend it to be.
Why?
I had heard of the book, read the book, and could barely tolerate it. I found it very simplistic, I spent the entire time reading it in a sense of disbelief (to wit; a climactic scene has a fight to the death between two students-who are SIX YEARS OLD!). I had heard that it is a remarkable study of the 'military mind' (I've been in the military for 18 years, and didn't see it. Perhaps its a remarkable study of the military mind, as understood by people who aren't in the military, but nothing more). Ultimately, my overarching complaint was that it was pretty small-basically a prep school story set in space (Good Will Hunting in space, or Patrick Conrad in space, or something), but utterly implausible given that it gives six year old kids the personalities of 19-22 year old competitive, even sociopathic, adults. I just didn't get it.

Steve

I vote for The Bonfire of the Vanities or A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe. Both were very good and also important novels, despite the more recent critical drubbings Wolfe has gotten. The Corrections by Franzen was also a very good novel.

For more deliberately popular work, Grisham's entire body of work has to be considered just for the enormous influence it has had on popular perceptions of the legal profession. (for good or ill is debatable)

Not sure if this is quite in the 25 year period, but "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry is my favorite novel of recent American novels, and I'd second Dan on In the Lake of the Woods, its excellent.

Charles McCarry, The Last Supper (1983) (not sure of date of mass market pb edition; recently reissued in hardback) is arguably the best spy novel ever written. Even if it's not, it's certainly in a league with the best of LeCarre, Furst, etc., both as a page turner and as a well written and characterized novel. On top of this, it combines several favorite beach reading genres -- spy thriller, New England WASP family saga, and CIA roman a clef. Not to mention Nazis, Vietnam, Berlin (Cold War and Weimar), inscrutible Red Chinese out of The Manchurian Candidate, Oedipal obsession, Kennedy assassinationology, and both moles and elephants. All while maintaining a LeCarre-like tone of moral seriousness and historical and tradecraft realism (spurious or otherwise, though McCarry apparently was a CIA agent for a while).

The Last Supper is one of several spy novels involving a hero, "Paul Christopher," that McCarry wrote in the 1970s and early 80s and that are at the top of the genre. His earlier and later books, some involving Christopher or his relatives are not bad,* and, in some cases, very entertaining, but nowhere near as good as his 3 or 4 classic Paul Christopher novels.

* Actually, a lot of his more recent political novels are pretty bad but still enjoyable in a guilty pleasure kind of way, particularly because they often contain wacked-out versions of the qualities that made his best work terrific. See, e.g., Lucky Bastard and Shelley's Heart, which, among other things, come across as right-wing nut case tracts, not, as Seinfeld would say, that there's anything wrong with that.

Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.
And I'm not sure if Art Spiegelman's "Maus" counts as mass-market (it probably doesn't) but I thought I'd throw that one in there, too.

"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.
And I'm not sure if Art Spiegelman's "Maus" counts as mass-market (it probably doesn't) but I thought I'd throw that one in there, too.

I'd have to go for Barbara Kingsolver's 'Prodigal Summer' - a great read and the best and most painless explanation of ecological balance thrown in to boot. Also Julia Glass' 'Three Junes' - incredibly lovely writing and a wonderful story.
I second Connie Willis' book on chaos theory 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' and Laurie R. King's ;The Beekeeper's Apprentice', but also her riveting story of a Vietnam vet 'Keeping Watch'.

that's easy:

+1 for Stephenson's Cryptonomicon

transcendent.