I know what you meant. In the winter, I also reach for comfort reading. I want books which are easy to get into, and hard to put down, that seem to "read themselves." If you haven't read Carol Berg, I highly recommend her. Start with Transformation - about a man who's been a slave for 20 years and had magic scoured out of him, who discovers that his cruel master, young prince Alexander, has a mark of great destiny about him, and demons plotting around him, and the slave cannot ignore his old duty to protect the prince. Berg's books always start out initimate, focused on one person, and then the world grows more and more complex and interesting. Myself, I'm reading her latest right now, The Soul Mirror (sequel to The Spirit Lens), which is a Renaissance magic mystery.