I live in Southeastern Idaho.

What this means is that, when offered speculative fiction at bookstores, one is usually offered Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Anne Rice and the media tie-in of the week. Not that any of these are necessarily bad. As a matter of fact, I have a shelf devoted to Bradbury. But this also means is that I'm missing out on some really great stuff.

It's only been recently (which means a few years ago to a few weeks ago) that I was introduced to authors like Jonathan Carroll, China Mieville, Kelly Link and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

So who else am I missing? Who are some of your favorite authors (and it doesn't necessarily need to be genre fiction, nor do they need to be recent, contemporary authors) that someone wouldn't necessarily run into based purely on popularity?

And do show I'm a good sport, I'll start with a suggestion:

M. Shayne Bell