87 books like Winterbirth

J.R.R. Tolkien's masterful storytelling is unmatched, and The Lord of the Rings weaves together moral dilemmas and profound philosophical ideas seamlessly, encouraging me to contemplate the nature of power, the importance of preserving the natural world, and the significance of individual choices.

The book's themes of heroism, friendship, sacrifice, and the struggle between good and evil resonate deeply. In addition, each of his characters feels like an aspect of oneself; the introspection it inspires is brilliant!

The Lord of the Rings instills a sense of wonder, ignites the imagination, and imparts timeless wisdom, which heavily transformed my perspective on life, my values, and my understanding of the human condition.

I came to this book by accident. I had overindulged in fantasy and was tired of recycled plots and worn tropes. I picked it up on holiday as a last resort and found a very different sort of fantasy, which rekindled my enthusiasm for the genre.

Inquisitor Glokta is a character I wanted to hate. He is a torturer, and a cripple, having been tortured himself. He’s ruthless and focused and possibly the meanest of anti-heroes. But I think I came to imagine what it was like to be the dashing hero, loved by everyone, feted by royalty, and then ruined by malice and torture, and yes, as this tale unfolded, I began to like him and the rest of the misfits that populate Joe Abercombie’s world very much indeed.

The Gentleman Bastards are a fun, exciting group with a connection that feels genuine throughout the story and has, by far, some of the best and most hilarious dialogue I've ever read in a book. I've also learned quite a bit about fantasy storytelling from this story, in that you can craft a compelling fantasy story without huge, world-changing stacks by making the characters emotionally motivated in their goal.

The mystery was also a pleasant surprise, as it incorporated clever clues and plot points that came together nicely for a satisfying conclusion. Actions and choices actually weighed in on the events.

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.

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.

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 is a gorgeous book to be savoured slowly.

It is suffused with music throughout (and the nerd within me loves the reoccurring literary motifs and phrases that definitely lend a musical quality to the book) and took me back to lazy summer days as a teenager when I first moved to London and the city felt wide open with excitement and possibility.

This is another love story, but one about community, family and the first loves that we learn from our parents.

Jewel thieves, undercover investigation, and - a fake engagement? I seriously could not predict the twists and turns aplenty in this book from Erin Swann which made me gasp several times, and then frantically keep reading.

I adored the clever descriptions that Erin crafted, and it became impossible not to fall in love with her characters. Grab it now.