Lee Winter Books in Order: Ice Queens, The Villains & Every Standalone (2026)
Lee Winter books in order is a trickier question than it looks, because almost none of her novels carry a number and almost all of them share a world. Journalists from her 2015 debut turn up at a wedding in a 2025 novella, a hotel guest from Hotel Queens becomes a lead in The Villains, and the ice queens cross over whenever they please. With Number Six closing The Villains trilogy in 2025, the When DC Loved Iowa novella out last summer and a new standalone, When She Flies, arriving in 2026, this is the full map: every Lee Winter book in publication order, the three series explained, where to start, the heat level and hotter picks for when you’ve read them all.
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Lee Winter Books in Order: Where to Start
Start with The Brutal Truth. It is the purest version of what Winter does: a miserable Australian crime reporter stuck in New York, a media mogul boss with a glacier where her feelings should be, and a bet about telling the whole truth that detonates both of them. If you want the shared universe from the beginning, start with The Red Files, her debut, which introduces the journalists everyone else keeps bumping into. If you want her newest era, The Fixer opens The Villains, the trilogy that broke her publisher’s preorder record.
Every Lee Winter novel stands alone. The numbered series (On the Record, Truth, The Villains) are the only places where reading order changes the experience, and even there each book follows its own couple to its own ending.
A word on heat before you buy: Winter is a slow-burn writer. The ice queen thaws over three hundred pages, the sex is on the page but brief and not graphic, and most books sit around 🌶️🌶️ to 🌶️🌶️🌶️. The Villains books and the When DC Loved Iowa novella run a little warmer. If explicit is what you’re after, the Fractal Enigma picks at the bottom are the fix.
The On the Record Series in Order
- The Red Files (2015): Lauren King, an ambitious Los Angeles reporter, and Catherine Ayers, her icy rival and a former Washington political correspondent, are both stuck covering A-list parties. A business launch hands them a very strange story (thirty-four sex workers and a missing pallet of pink champagne) and they reluctantly team up on a road trip toward Nevada. A Lambda Literary finalist and the book that built Winter’s universe.
- Under Your Skin (2018): Catherine, now a DC bureau chief, and Lauren, now her fiancée, head to Lauren’s Iowa hometown to plan a wedding and run into a stolen food-delivery robot, a woman from the past and a scheme to microchip military veterans. Lauren’s mechanic brothers, her sharp-tongued Meemaw and one haughty cat round out the cast.
- When DC Loved Iowa (2025, novella): Cynthia Redwell, a closeted, high-femme DC finance journalist, wakes up after her best friend’s Iowa wedding next to Suze Beringer, a butch flight mechanic and former softball player who is infuriatingly unbothered by Cynthia’s cutting remarks. A low-angst, opposites-attract follow-up to the Red Files world (Catherine, Lauren and Monique all appear), around 30,000 words.
Read The Red Files first. Under Your Skin assumes you know the couple, and the novella is a reward for readers who have followed them all the way through.
The Truth Series in Order
- The Brutal Truth (2017): Maddie Grey is an Australian crime reporter drowning in New York, working for a small paper owned by Elena Bartell, the media mogul who buys and guts newspapers for a living. A bet that requires both women to tell each other the complete truth backfires on both of them. The definitive Lee Winter ice queen book.
- The Awkward Truth (2021): Felicity Simmons, Elena’s ruthless corporate lawyer, is about to take over a media empire when her boss sends her to investigate a South Bronx charity that treats the pets of people experiencing homelessness. The vet, Dr. Sandy Cooper, is everything Felicity isn’t. A sidequel that runs alongside the back half of The Brutal Truth, with a light mystery and a lot of dogs.
The short story Five Times Felicity Met Elena, collected in Sliced Ice, is the prequel to The Awkward Truth. Read The Brutal Truth first; Felicity makes far more sense once you’ve watched her at Elena’s elbow.
The Villains Series in Order
- The Fixer (2023): Eden Lawless, an idealistic activist, is hired by a secretive corporation to help bring down a corrupt mayor, without realizing who she is really working for. Her new boss is Michelle Hastings, a guarded CEO Eden cannot stop thinking about. Set in the Red Files universe, readable alone, and the book that broke Ylva Publishing’s preorder record.
- Chaos Agent (2023): Michelle promotes Eden to her full-time staff while hiding what her company actually does. When Eden finds out, she has to decide whether to take down the boss she is falling for. The direct continuation of The Fixer, and the 2024 Golden Crown winner for Romantic Blend.
- Number Six (2025): Ottilie Zimmermann, a cool, pragmatic former spy with a morally gray job, is tying up loose ends in Las Vegas before retiring to a Pacific island when she meets Monique Carson, a flirtatious sex educator who has never met a woman she couldn’t read. Neither can read the other. Bridges The Villains and Hotel Queens, includes the bonus story Number Five, and took the 2026 Golden Crown for Romantic Blend.
The Fixer and Chaos Agent are one story in two halves. Read them back to back. Number Six was added as a finale and works on its own, though it lands harder if you already know Monique from Hotel Queens.
Lee Winter Standalones in Order
- Requiem for Immortals (2016): Natalya Tsvetnenko is a professional cellist in Melbourne and, under the name Requiem, a professional assassin. Her latest contract is Alison Ryan, a woman who seems far too harmless to be anyone’s target. A Lambda Literary finalist and a Golden Crown winner, and the darkest thing Winter has written.
- Shattered (2017): Winter’s one superhero novel, part of Ylva’s Superheroine Collection, and the 2018 Golden Crown winner for Science Fiction/Fantasy. The odd one out in the catalog and a favorite with readers who want her voice in a different genre.
- Breaking Character (2018): Elizabeth Thornton, a famously cold British actress trapped in a hit medical drama, is linked romantically to her perky co-star Summer Hayes after a run of mishaps. When an eccentric French director offers Elizabeth the role of her life on condition that he meets her girlfriend, she asks Summer to play the part. Celebrity fake dating with Winter’s sharpest ice queen.
- Changing the Script (2019): Alex Levitin, a reluctant LA indie filmmaker, flies to a small New Zealand town to salvage a badly reviewed fantasy film whose set is being sabotaged. Sam Keegan, the local senior constable, wants the production gone. They have to find the saboteur together. Small-town, slow-burn and very funny.
- Hotel Queens (2020): Amelia Duxton, the reserved London hotel heiress her staff call the ice queen, and Kai Fisher, the unpredictable Grand Millennium executive known as The Closer, flirt at a Las Vegas bar without realizing they are rivals for the same hotel. One week in Vegas. The 2021 Golden Crown winner for Romantic Blend.
- Vengeance Planning for Amateurs (2024): Olivia Roberts, a muffin baker whose exes keep taking advantage of her, decides to get even after someone steals her grandmother’s stuffed penguin. She advertises for an accomplice at the local crime bookstore and the owner, Margaret Blackwood, applies. Neither is any good at scheming. Winter’s funniest book and the 2025 Golden Crown winner.
- When She Flies (2026): Winter’s newest standalone, out from Ylva in 2026 in ebook and audio.
The Ice Queens, Explained
“Ice Queens” is not an official series. It is the label readers (and Winter’s publisher) use for the archetype she has made her own: the woman who runs a newsroom, a media empire, a film set or a hotel chain, who has not let anyone past her desk in a decade, and who melts for exactly one person. Catherine Ayers, Elena Bartell, Elizabeth Thornton, Amelia Duxton, Felicity Simmons and Michelle Hastings are all cut from that ice. If you want them in one place, Sliced Ice: Lee Winter’s Iconic Ice Queens (2021) collects short stories about her coldest heroines, including the Felicity prequel. Our guide to the best sapphic ice queen romance books runs the archetype far past where Winter’s heat stops.
All Lee Winter Books in Publication Order
- The Red Files (2015, On the Record #1)
- Requiem for Immortals (2016)
- Shattered (2017)
- The Brutal Truth (2017, Truth #1)
- Love Is Not Nothing (2017, short ebook)
- Under Your Skin (2018, On the Record #2)
- Breaking Character (2018)
- Changing the Script (2019)
- Hotel Queens (2020)
- Sliced Ice: Lee Winter’s Iconic Ice Queens (2021, short story collection)
- The Awkward Truth (2021, Truth #2)
- The Fixer (2023, The Villains #1)
- Chaos Agent (2023, The Villains #2)
- Vengeance Planning for Amateurs (2024)
- Number Six (2025, The Villains #3)
- When DC Loved Iowa (2025, novella)
- When She Flies (2026)
What’s Next for Lee Winter
When She Flies is the 2026 release, a standalone available in ebook and audio from Ylva. Number Six, which closed The Villains, picked up the 2026 Golden Crown award for Romantic Blend and a silver Ann Bannon Popular Choice award, making it three Golden Crowns in a row for Winter’s last three novels. No screen adaptation has been announced. If you’re new, the fastest way to see why her readers are so loyal is The Brutal Truth, then The Fixer.
See When She Flies on Amazon →
Read Next: Hotter Picks From Fractal Enigma
Lee Winter readers come for the ice queen: the hotel executive, the CEO, the woman whose praise is rarer than her smile. These Fractal Enigma reads keep her, keep the workplace, and open the door all the way. Every one is Inferno heat.
Last Call for the Ice Queen — Aurora North
Natalie Price, forty-five, runs the Bellwether Hotel like a Swiss watch. The consultant brought in to resurrect its dead bar just took the watch off her wrist. Ten weeks, one rule (not in the hotel), and an age-gap, switch-dynamic slow burn that reads like Hotel Queens if Amelia Duxton had never learned to say no.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Ice Queen, Age Gap, Workplace Romance, Luxury Hotel, Praise Kink, Snowed In, One Bed
Start reading Last Call for the Ice Queen →
Hostile Take-Her-Over — Aurora North
Samira Voss is forty-six, silver-templed and the untouchable CEO of a hotel chain in crisis. Brynn Calder is the thirty-one-year-old restructuring specialist the board hired to decide whether Samira keeps her company. Their confrontations become a private wager with one rule: nothing that happens in private can touch the review. Then Brynn finds out the crisis was engineered from inside the boardroom. Free with Kindle Unlimited.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Enemies with Benefits, Age Gap, Ice Queen, Workplace Romance, Corporate Espionage, Praise Kink
Start reading Hostile Take-Her-Over →
The Lesbian Clause — Aurora North
Vera Ashford sells stories for a living and has her own life looking exactly the way it should. One reckless kiss with Indigo Marr, the older, sharper creative director she is supposed to be competing with, ends up written into a contract as fake dating. Breaking Character’s fake relationship moved into a creative agency, with an ice queen, a late-bloomer and only one bed.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Fake Dating, Rivals to Lovers, Ice Queen, Bi Awakening, Workplace Romance, One Bed, Age Gap
Start reading The Lesbian Clause →
Cold Snap — Aurora North
Elena Voss is the CEO they call the Ice Queen: forty-one, divorced, worth three billion dollars and incapable of a real smile. Her executive assistant sees straight through the glass desk. One blizzard, one chalet, five days. For readers who wanted Elena Bartell and Maddie snowed in together with the lights on. Free with Kindle Unlimited.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Boss/Employee, Ice Queen, Age Gap, Snowed In, One Bed, Grumpy/Sunshine, Praise Kink
Want the whole shelf? Our round-up of sapphic office and workplace romance has more boardrooms, and books like The X Ingredient covers the boss and assistant dynamic specifically.
FAQ: Lee Winter Reading Order
Do you need to read Lee Winter’s books in order?
Only within the series. Under Your Skin follows The Red Files, Chaos Agent continues The Fixer directly, and The Awkward Truth reads better after The Brutal Truth. Everything else stands alone, with cameos as a bonus for readers who know the universe.
Which Lee Winter book should I read first?
The Brutal Truth for the classic ice queen slow burn, The Red Files if you want the shared universe from the start, or The Fixer for her newest era and the fastest pace.
Are Lee Winter’s books connected?
Most of them. The Red Files, Under Your Skin, When DC Loved Iowa and The Villains trilogy share the same journalists and fixers; The Brutal Truth and The Awkward Truth share Elena Bartell’s media empire; and Number Six carries Monique Carson over from Hotel Queens. Requiem for Immortals, Shattered, Breaking Character, Changing the Script and Vengeance Planning for Amateurs are fully standalone.
How spicy are Lee Winter’s books?
Moderate. The slow burn is the main event and the sex, when it arrives, is on the page but brief, roughly 🌶️🌶️ to 🌶️🌶️🌶️ depending on the book. Our romance spice levels guide explains the scale; every Fractal Enigma pick above is Inferno.
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