I would recommend the following non-fiction as useful reference tools:

• Forensics For Dummies by D.P. Lyle, M.D. Lyle is a writer and lecturer in forensics. I attended one of his online courses and learned a lot – all those finicky little facts that trip up writers. His Forensic for Dummies is the easy way to dip your toe into the field of forensics.

• The History of Underclothes by C. Willett & P. Cunnington. A useful reference guide for writers and also an interesting read. Self-explanatory.

• Princesses, The Six Daughters of George III by Flora Fraser. Very in-depth reading, not suitable for a light skim. The research is formidable.

• No Place for Ladies by Helen Rappaport. This is about women in the Crimean War – all sorts of women from titled women to nurses. Very readable.

• Bonnie Prince Charlie by Susan Maclean Kybett. This book, chockful of research and valuable facts, unfortunately suffers from a lack of pictures to break up the text. But it is certainly the definitive biography of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

I can recommend the following fiction as great reads:

• Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer. There is rabid attention given to Heyer’s Regency romances, but not so much attention paid to her detective fiction which is amusing, erudite and very redolent of the times in which she lived, similar to Ngaio Marsh. 

• Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner. One of my favourite authors. In this book there is a woman whose son regularly tells her he’s going to kill her. She is endeavouring to handle his mental issues on her own when all hell breaks loose.

• No More Dying Then by Ruth Rendell. An oldie but a goodie. An Inspector Wexford mystery. No need to say more. 

• The Dickens with Love by Josh Lanyon. This is an e-book, M/M. I hadn’t read a lot of male/male sex before this one but Lanyon is such an erudite, accomplished writer it has set me on the trail for more of the same.

• The Killing Place by Tess Gerritsen. I had read only a couple of Tess’s books before listening to her lecture at the New Zealand Romance Writers’ annual conference in August 2011. She was such a great speaker I promptly bought a couple of her books. The Killing Place could refer to a couple of places in the book, but most particularly to an underground cavern where a group of followers of a charismatic guru were buried some years ago.