I love the works of Lois Bujold. She's great at portraying the inner lives of people who want to win, and showing the emotional struggles they have. (Especially Mirror Dance, but that book is not a good entry point into the Vorkosigan universe because it assumes a lot of the background from the earlier books). Many of the Vorkosigan books are available online.

Curse of Chalion is also great, and includes an interesting portrayal of what religious institutions might look like if gods were real and intervened to improve human life, but were not omnipotent. (i.e. the institutions would suck a lot less).