[Jack Vance]
My favorite is Planet of Adventure, where a ship finds an unknown planet and is promptly shot down, with one guy crash landing and spending four books to find a way to get home. There’s a bunch of weird alien races and even more weird human races and tons of cool settings along the way. I don’t understand why this hasn’t been filmed yet.
There’s the Demon Princes, five books where a boy who survived a massacre goes after the five bad guys who organized it. This takes him all across the known parts of the galaxy where he encounters mostly humans with cultures that evolved in strange directions while he tracks down the five demon princes.
If you’re more into fantasy, there’s the Dying Earth collection, especially the Cugel ones.
Just read the synopses to find something that appeals to you, it’s hard to go wrong with Jack Vance.