Books like Winterbirth — picked by fans

I read this trilogy in 1998 when I had just finished high school.

Even then, I understood the book presented Frodo as the main hero, but I was always aware that without Sam, Frodo couldn't go far. He was just a gardener in the beginning, but when the books were over, he proved himself and even became the mayor of the Shire.

Seeing a regular guy carrying the main hero on his shoulders is something else. The decisions he made and his forcing himself to do more transformed him into a natural hero and a leader.

I never thought I’d cheer for a crippled torturer, but somehow Abercrombie makes me do it.

The characters in The Blade Itself feel raw and jagged, like real people rather than fantasy archetypes. What I loved most was how no one is truly heroic—everyone’s broken, desperate, or scheming, yet still magnetic. The dialogue crackles with wit, and the shifting perspectives kept me hooked.

It’s grimdark, yes, but never bleak for the sake of it. Instead, it reveals how ugly and fascinating people can be when survival and ambition collide.

So, first off, this is one of the best audiobooks of all time. While Scott did an amazing job spinning the tale, Michael Page elevated this work to a whole new level. There was a time around 2010 when fantasy became overly serious and dark. And I was rescued by the Gentlemen Bastards which was fast paced, fun, and fabulous. The absolute best part of this book is its humor, something that is sorely missing in fantasy these days.

Of course the stars of the show are Locke and Jean. Locke is a charismatic, cunning cutthroat and Jean is his loyal right-hand man. Together they make a great pair. Their deep, brotherly friendship and unwavering loyalty to each other is fantastic, and the reason they made my list.

This series is very elegantly written, but that’s not what makes it the most unique on this list. For a start, the protagonist is a skinny womanising drug-addict immortal with enormous wings. Yes, you read that right. He can fly, he drinks coffee, and when he overdoses he trips into a parallel universe. Several, actually. What else inhabits these strange worlds? Giant ants. And it’s these horse-sized monsters that the people of the Fourlands are embroiled in bitter conflict with. They pour through dimensional tears in waves, and the fighting is frenetic, bloody, and gruesome. Swainston has an almost forensic approach to the description of violence in these books, and it adds a dash of realism to an otherwise wildly fantastical setting and premise. A criminally underappreciated series.

I adore historical mysteries, particularly those that confront the unsavory realities of racism, sexism, and homophobia in our not-so-distant pasts. This book delves into all of these in such a striking, fully inhabited way.

What I loved most about this book was the immediacy and urgency of its voice, which drew me in from the first page and never let me go. It’s a harrowing story, and the narrative frame gives it a pace that always manages to drive forward while still allowing enough space for the setting to come to life.

I spent eighteen years writing the authorized biography of W.B. Yeats, and he haunts me still.

Though his poetry is world-famous, his autobiographies are less well known; yet they illuminate like nothing else the experience of living between Ireland and England and the contrast between a childhood in late-Victorian County Sligo and coming of age in the artistic circles of fin-de-siecle London.

At the end of his life, Yeats reflected on the tension between his Irish background and English conditioning and the contradictory feelings they inspired, writing, "My hatred tortures me with love, my love with hate." Elsewhere, he wrote that poetry comes out of "the struggle with ourselves," and his autobiographies show this to mesmerizing effect.

Dominic wrote two very good crime books in a short series before publishing Vine Street.

I am including Vine Street on my list because, although it’s set in London and is therefore not ‘regional’, it was one of the great crime novels of 2021-22 and deserves to become a classic. I read this book before it was published, and I knew, like everyone else, that it was something special.

The story spans almost a century, from the seedy streets of London’s Soho in the 1930s, until the present day. There are some really well-researched and vividly depicted descriptions of police investigations in the 30s, and just for that it’s worth a read. But there’s also a twisting, mesmerizing plot that takes us all the way to the present.

What really distinguishes Vine Street, though, is the writing itself, which seems to echo the rhythms of the 1930s jazz clubs, and… show more.

This novel perfectly captures the frenetic pleasure-seeking ethos of the youth of the English upper classes after the horrors of WW1- unsurpsingly, as it is written by one of them.

Evelyn Waugh was one of the Bright Young People, as they became known, who tore round London in sports cars, snatching at policemen’s helmets for the treasure hunts they loved.

If you adore a second chance romance, then this is the steamy billionaire romance with a trip to London for you.

I adored how Rebecca Castle weaves together hints for the second standalone in this series, and a few of the scenes made me pant! So sizzling. Make sure you grab it now.

I had a ‘property tycoons’ itch that I needed to scratch, and this book by Rosa Lucas was exactly what I needed.

I adored this enemies to lovers high stakes romance, and the witty heroine was someone I was rooting for from the very instant I met her. With a dash of CEO/employee and a whole host of fire, this book needs to be on your ereader.