Recently I've been reading Paul Kidd's Greyhawk novels, and they are super fun hack & slash romps that don't take themselves too seriously. The main characters are a decidedly chaotic good ranger, his sentient hell hound pelt, and a sultry fairy. The first one is called White Plume mountain, and is based on the module of the same name.
A few months back I read Richard Baker's most recent trilogy, Blades of the Moonsea- the first one is called Swordmage. Those were lots of fun, especially the second one. He sets up a good scenario that generates the plot for the trilogy pretty naturally, the main characters are engaging and interesting, and the villains are those you love to hate.
I also enjoyed the first half of the War of the Spider Queen series. This is a series of six novels about the drow written by different authors. It starts with Dissolution by Richard Lee Byers. The series kind of loses steam in the 4th and 5th book, but I plowed through those because I loved the characters so much. Things picked up again in the 6th book, and there are some fun plane hopping stories.
If you are looking for some good D&Desque novels, I can't recommend the Wit'ch books by James Clemens highly enough. They were quite well written and engaging sword & sorcery novels. The story was good, the characters interesting and enjoyable, the world was fun to explore, and the action was exciting. I'm sad the author seems to have turned away from fantasy and writes thrillers now, under the name James Rollins. I guess if Lucasfilm gives you some cash to write the new Indiana Jones novelization, though, you can't say no.
