I just looked at a synopsis of A Soldier of the Great War and I think I've read it, probably in between Winter's Tale and Antproof Case, so I must have liked it well enough to pick up the last one. Which I kind of wished I hadn't finished, it actually made me retroactively like his other books less, though I think I have finally gotten over that.

I will have to check out Ellis Island!! I haven't read anything else by him.

Do any of you know of books that are comparable in any way? Someone recommended "Little, Big" by John Crowley, which I also enjoyed, but nowhere near as much as I loved "Winter's Tale".

100 Years of Solitude? Master and Maragarita? Carter Beats the Devil? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay?

Seconding Kavalier and Klay. There are also the YA novels of Joan Aiken, many (most?) of which are set in an almost perpetually wintry alternative-history Victorian/Edwardian England that at times feels like it must exist in the same universe as Lake of the Coheeries.

I adore, adore, adore Winter's Tale. I re-read it every few years, usually waiting for a day when I'm nice and snowed-in.

Pearly Soames, now there's a villain. Mad for color, he was. Tucked up behind the zodiac in Grand Central Station.

I loved Memoir from Antproof Case, but I remember that the first time I read it I didn't like it at first and stuck with it and it all came together and was lovely at the end. And so now if I re-read I remember how it came together for me.

Winter's Tale is one of my favorite books ever. A book I find comparable is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Thanks for the recommendations!! I will definitely look into them. Since I'm substitute teaching at the moment and the vast majority of the lesson plans I get left involve me doing absolutely nothing, I find myself with a LOT of time to read.

I'm also really glad you all like Winter's Tale!! I'm trying in vain to convince my mother to read it, but she has it in her head that reading books that are actually good is somehow more difficult than reading books that are bad.

I also loved Winter's Tale, but it's hard to think of other books that have the same vibe.

The closest for me would probably be things like Little, Big, which was already mentioned or W.P. Kinsella's baseball books.

Thinking about it, it's a style of lyric fantasy that's probably more associated with shorter forms. Whereas part of the appeal of Winter's Tale is that it's so big and so absorbing. (Though to be honest, the characters are not all fully fleshed out.)

Charles De Lint's urban fantasies have some of the same feel. Bradbury at his most lyrical.

finally buzzing though Mockingjay. Even knowing what's going to happen, still incredibly engaging.

And someone upthread mentioned that they never explaned why Snow's breath smelled like blood. Finnick does, during his propo speech. Says that Snow poisoned so many people with shared food or drink, and sometimes the antidote didn't work fast enough, so his breath smells like blood because of the open wounds in his mouth rather anticlimactic, really.