The New Jedi Order is an epic 20 books series taking place 25 years after Return of the Jedi. I loved the ones I read, but many more people hate them. It's very dark; lots of people were killed off (only one movie character, the rest were book created characters) and many planets were devasted.
It does contain a great line by Han Solo, though:
"It's not the years; it's the parsecs."
Vector Prime is first in the series.
Another great one is Shadow Hunter. It's before Episode I and about Darth Maul hunting down a guy, a Jedi, and a Neimodian on Coruscant. Full of action and adventure and is mostly all original characters.
And of course, the ones listed are good.
Non-SW books I loved are:
Redwall,
Ender's Game, and
Of Mice and Men. My three favorite books of all time