For children's books it's hard to do better than Terry Pratchett or Lemony Snicket (knocks Harry Potter into a cocked hat). I'm quite a fan of Iain Banks, both his sci-fi and "straight" novels - The Bridge is an excellent novel. Quite similar to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere in some ways (Good Omes, which Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett, is one of few good examples where co-authoring works out. c.f Ann McCaffrey, whose sci-fi series were great, but whose (mainly later) collaborations were pretty naff on the whole).
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