Hi all, new here and I've been lurking a bit reading through the posts. I read through the openers book list and it's a great one. I didn't see any mention of this book though:
The Urantia Book, a book I think a lot of you would find fascinating. You can find it online here:
http://www.urantia.org/papers/
This is one very involved and detailed book and was supposedly written by several "hosts of heaven" authors. It describes in detail the hierarchy of the various creatures of the universe and their place in it. From the "Universal Father" (God) who inhabits the Central and Superuniverse, on down through the ranks of angels, Melchizedeks, Creator Sons, Wayfarers, Life Carriers and on and on. A Creator Son would be a being of the rank of Jesus Christ and he controls a certain area of the Universe, in other words, he's the boss of a few parsecs of space and every planet that falls within it. Not only does it describe in detail the nature of the super universe and the supreme trinity, but also goes into detail about the local universe. How Urantia (which is the original name of earth) came into being and how life was started on this planet. The final section of the book (which is much larger than the Bible) deals with the life of Christ on earth. Other sections deal with the "planetary rebellion" (Lucifer's fall from grace), the two gardens of Eden, evolution of marriage, the spread of religion and how each was conceived, government on another planet (very interesting) and so forth. There isn't much it doesn't cover. If this book was in fact written by a man (and it's been around since at least the 1920's or 30's) he was one deep thinking dude. Anyway, thought I would mention it.
Another book is
Genesis Revisited by Zechariah Sitchin, a Sumerian scholar which deals with the Sumerian versions of the creation epic, flood, their pantheon of gods etc. Genesis seems to be based on these earlier, much more detailed accounts of those topics.