Beth, here are some recent (as in, in the last decade) books you might like:
Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, You Don't Love Me Yet, Fortress of Solitude, and Men and Cartoons
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections
Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases
Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Shelley Jackson's Half-Life
Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies
Whatever that recent collection of 3 Rick Moody novellas is called
They've also been around for a while, but Philip Roth, Luc Sante, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon are all still writing interesting stuff.
Personally, I've really been into semi-forgotten obscure and/or experimental writers lately: David Markson, Frederic Tuten, Stanley Elkin, Flann O'Brien, Leonard Michaels, Roberto Bolano. And Donald Barthelme, though he's kind of famous and obscure at the same time. Some of these guys might be on the weird side, depending on your tastes.
Oh, and if you like sci-fi, Octavia E. Butler's work is amazing and terrifying.