I liked the Thrawn trilogy, like most pepole did. I wonder how good it would have seemed in the middle of all the new EU rather than at the head of it. After a while, every writer had a "Trilogy" out there, all with superweapons, all with threats to the Solo children, all with the new badass, la-dee-dah.

The titles I'd recommend:

Shadows of the Empire - my only quibble was how Dash Rendar had a stupid name and was written to "out-Solo" Han Solo. Freaking stupid. Rest of it's plenty good, though.

The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy - a lot more subtle than the most of the other EU trilogies. One of the villians seemed odd, even by sci-fi standards; also, author KW Jeter was apparently legally obligated to include the word "obsequious" as often as possible. Still, very entertaining.

AC Crispin's Han Solo trilogy - better than the Thrawn trilogy, IMO.

For PTEU, I liked the James Luceno novel, Cloak of Deception and (the author escapes me) Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter.

Everything else I've read ranged from average to bad to god-awful. Children of the Jedi had literary AIDS, I swear.