Well, that depends on what type of fiction you like, what narrative style
you like, etc. Reading candamaamaa is definitely a good beginning. In high
school, I graduated to reading weeklies and monthlies, and my mom's
collection of yaddanapooDi novels, and then onto better things. Some of her
novels (meena, keerti kireeTaalu, ee dESam maakEmiccindi? etc.) have decent
story, good characters, and some very good narration. If you are more
interested in short stories, there are lots of anthologies of classic
stories available; they are your best bet. there was one called 'telugu
katha' published, I think, by central saahitya academy. viSaalaandhra came
out with complete works of koku, gurajaaDa, paalagummi padmaraaju,
Sreepaada et al. All these writers dealt mostly with social themes of the
times, but used varied narrative techinques, and different levels of
language. For eg., you see a lot of vijayanagaram usages in gurajaaDa's
writings, and kOnaseema effects in Sreepaada's. Mixed anthologies have been
published by various organizations. Try some of these authors: raavi
Saastry, beenaa dEvi, vasundhara, mallaadi venkaTakRshNa moorty, mallaadi
raamakRshNa Saastry, tilak, calam, buccibaabu, gOpicand, yenDamoori (aa
okkaTee aDakku).
Hope this has been of some help. I can't help but say, 'you should have
started on this quest when you were at UPenn'!:-) Good luck.
Nasy