[nakano]

No worries.  Just dove back into SR in the fall myself after a hiatus of 4-5 years and the first thing I did was pick through the old novels and grabbed my Findley. 

[Crossbow]

Bull, nakano.....thanks 

Hey didn't she wrestle Medusa?  Sorry, wrestling geek moment.

Anyway, I always like the first trilogy, even though it is technically and ruleswise out of date.

[Outrider45]

Bull, nakano.....thanks 

Hey didn't she wrestle Medusa?  Sorry, wrestling geek moment.

HA! I havent thought of wrestling in years and now I clearly remember what she looked like. Not good....

[Acme]

As well if you like the high end, epic sort of stuff, the Carl Sargent/Marc Gasgione novels, Streets of Blood etc are decent. 

Only if you don't read Black Madonna.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED- AVOID BLACK MADONNA!

[Mystic]

I avoided that one for a reason....cant remember what it was though. Me, if we are recommending anyold school SR Books: Into the Shadows as a SR Primer, Wolf and Raven By Mike Stackpole, The Dragon Heart Triology (even though Quicksilver kind of annoys me), and Steven Kenson's novels: Ragnarok, The Burning Times, and Crossroads (Talon and Boom rule!)

[Acme]

I avoided that one for a reason....cant remember what it was though.

I don't think this is a spoiler when I say- for some reason Sargent and Gasgione went in a crazy direction with that one and the ending just completely pissed me off, it felt completely out of character for characters they'd been using for two to three novels.  Very disappointed that was effectively their ending too. 
Another one to avoid for much the same reason is Shadowboxer- a novel I enjoyed for most of it except for the last chapter.  Also, I'm going out on a limb here and saying that I didn't really like the Nyx Smith novels only because he wrote them in present tense, which threw me off completely.


Now as far as recommendations: get the Findley books even if they're just for the e-reader.  Findley has long been considered one of the best Shadowrun writers for sourcebooks or fiction and it shows.  Dirk Montgomery is a fun character. 
Just Compensation by Bob Charrette- The pacing was good, the location was handled well, and well- it's Charrette.  It was good to see him return to his baby.
And I might be in the minority when I actually liked The Forever Drug.  Back when it first came out, I heard people trashing it to no end for being goofy, but I liked the idea that Smedman took risks and did two novel things for the book:  having a shapeshifter be the main character and setting it in Nova Scotia. 
Another book of hers that I liked was Blood Sport, the Aztlan novel.  This was back when the novel that came out usually corresponded to the major sourcebook that dropped. (Blood Sport was the Aztlan book, Burning Bright was the Bug City book, Streets of Blood the London Scourcebook novel, etc.)  I'd recommend it just for the background you can get and feel for running in Aztlan alone.

[Mystic]

Nyx Smith's stuff was hit or miss with me. I liked the Striper Assassin and Who Hunts the Hunter (Tikki is still a fav character of mine), but could not get through a recent re-read of Steel Rain. Im sorry, but the main character in Rain was just so damn one dimentional.

And yes, Burning Bright was a good read, I just wish we could have found out the fate of Mr. Teller et al.

[Frostriese]

As well if you like the high end, epic sort of stuff, the Carl Sargent/Marc Gasgione novels, Streets of Blood etc are decent.  

Only if you don't read Black Madonna.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED- AVOID BLACK MADONNA!

Its a decent enough write... of course, its also plain silly and very un-shadowrun-y. Same for that Nosferatu novel. But IMO both are actually better than Streets of Blood, which was just dull.

I think most SR novels have been... mediocre at best, with only some few exceptions. Burning Bright is of course good, and so is Technobabel, but both had the great advantage of covering key events in the timeline and being closely connected to the metaplot. Oh, and in the German-exclusive material there are Markus Heitz' novels. Well, the earlier ones, anyway, the later ones are a really bad case of Cerebus Syndrome. (And it does mean, either, that the German novels would be good in general, some are really, utterly terrible)