I'm just reading the Dresden books for the first time, too!
My recommendations - I'll give a little description of what I'm recommending, because I hate recommendations that don't tell you what kind of book it is you're going to get into:
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun tetralogy.
Actually, there are five books, not four. It is EPIC, and correctly considered one of the finest literary works of the 20th century. Technically it's science fiction, but it takes place on an Earth so far in the future that all knowledge or memory of our time has long disappeared, so there aren't any cute and pat references to human history that we'd be familiar with. The reader is thrust into a truly and profoundly alien landscape, and it's a fantastic, epic story following the journey of the single most unforgettable hero/protagonist that I've ever encountered in literature, that being Severian, Journeyman of the Order of Seekers for Truth and Penitence. It's got everything you could want and more, and it's a brilliant vision of the far, far future of humanity, when we've burned out empires in the stars and Earth has become a backwater.
Seriously. Read it. It's effin' brilliant. Wolfe went on to then write Book of the Long Sun, which is baroque and epic and takes place in the same universe, but thousands of years before, and that all takes place in the whorls, the massive worldships that humanity sent out to space to colonize other planets with. (The shipes are so big that they have their own atmosphere, weather, and suns.) Again, an absolutely appealing and wonderful hero/protagonist in the form of Patera Silk and his faithful android servant Maytera Marble. Absolutely exquisite writing all around.
Next up, have you read Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion cycles? Also epic and incredibly well written sci fi of the far, far future, although this is high space opera coupled with a fantastically vivid cast of characters, and shows a universe where humanity has sprawled outwards to hundreds and hundreds of worlds. (Brawne Lamia is one of my favorite female characters in sci fi EVER.)
Simmons went on to write what I consider his magnum opus, that being the Ilium and Olympos books, which is another vision of humanity's future entirely, and features sentient robots reading Proust, Greek gods and goddesses battling android shock troops, and lots and lots of Mars.
You can't go wrong with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a time travel comedy of manners featuring two people displaced in Victorian England, and it's hilarious. The fact that a dog and a cat - Cyril and Princess Arjumand - are two of the main characters should tell you how awesome this book is. Also, there's this wonderful crackling chemistry between the hero and heroine. It reminds me of the Thin Man films. So. Good.
I got yer recommendations right here.
My recommendations - I'll give a little description of what I'm recommending, because I hate recommendations that don't tell you what kind of book it is you're going to get into:
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun tetralogy.
Actually, there are five books, not four. It is EPIC, and correctly considered one of the finest literary works of the 20th century. Technically it's science fiction, but it takes place on an Earth so far in the future that all knowledge or memory of our time has long disappeared, so there aren't any cute and pat references to human history that we'd be familiar with. The reader is thrust into a truly and profoundly alien landscape, and it's a fantastic, epic story following the journey of the single most unforgettable hero/protagonist that I've ever encountered in literature, that being Severian, Journeyman of the Order of Seekers for Truth and Penitence. It's got everything you could want and more, and it's a brilliant vision of the far, far future of humanity, when we've burned out empires in the stars and Earth has become a backwater.
Seriously. Read it. It's effin' brilliant. Wolfe went on to then write Book of the Long Sun, which is baroque and epic and takes place in the same universe, but thousands of years before, and that all takes place in the whorls, the massive worldships that humanity sent out to space to colonize other planets with. (The shipes are so big that they have their own atmosphere, weather, and suns.) Again, an absolutely appealing and wonderful hero/protagonist in the form of Patera Silk and his faithful android servant Maytera Marble. Absolutely exquisite writing all around.
Next up, have you read Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion cycles? Also epic and incredibly well written sci fi of the far, far future, although this is high space opera coupled with a fantastically vivid cast of characters, and shows a universe where humanity has sprawled outwards to hundreds and hundreds of worlds. (Brawne Lamia is one of my favorite female characters in sci fi EVER.)
Simmons went on to write what I consider his magnum opus, that being the Ilium and Olympos books, which is another vision of humanity's future entirely, and features sentient robots reading Proust, Greek gods and goddesses battling android shock troops, and lots and lots of Mars.
You can't go wrong with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a time travel comedy of manners featuring two people displaced in Victorian England, and it's hilarious. The fact that a dog and a cat - Cyril and Princess Arjumand - are two of the main characters should tell you how awesome this book is. Also, there's this wonderful crackling chemistry between the hero and heroine. It reminds me of the Thin Man films. So. Good.