Goodness me, what a treasure-house to explore! I'd suggest putting the Bujold quite high on the list, as she actually dedicated one of the Vorkosigan books ( A Civil Campaign, near the end of the cycle) to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette and Dorothy" - not a bad set of literary heroines. Her fantasy books - the Chalion cycle, and the latest, The Sharing Knife are definitely fantasy romances too. I read the latter last week and much enjoyed it.

I adore Tough Guide - my copy was signed by DWJ when I met her a couple of years ago, so it's doubly precious!

Long-term you might want to investigate the other Sorcery and Cecelia books, which are also good fun, and Patricia Wrede's other books, more "straight" fantasy.

And Dunnett is just wonderful. She does make you want to follow in the footsteps of her hero, though, which is expensive - Scotland is merely a start. He is blond and blue-eyed. My type, it seems!

Have you really only now discovered Heyer? I worked my way through all her books as an undergraduate - which is why I have a very battered selection that were second-hand thirty-five years ago! The perfect books for a train journey or the bath, or when you have a cold and don't want to move far, I find...

Heyer is like chocolate - perfect comfort food. I particularly like the super-competent heroines with dotty families - Frederica, the Grand Sophy, Venetia</>. I see no guilt in owning Heyer. Did you know An Infamous Army is required reading at Sandhurst, because her portrait of Waterloo is so detailed, gripping and accurate?

Dunnet researched her stuff very thoroughly, and there are fascinating details about early modern Scotland (and then France, Malta, Stamboul, Russia...) - the hero is a touch too good to be true, and the reader actively dislikes him for much of the first book, but he's a charmer, and most readers I know have been seduced by him!

I wasn't enamoured of Shards either - I think they improve about three books or so in. She uses them to play with a few different genres too, from space opera to comedy of manners. Worth keeping going a little while.

In terms of 'your mother's SFR', I seem to remember a SFR -- or maybe it was waht you'd lable Futs -- cover on The Pile, i.e., a stack of romance novels and Tom Clancy thrillers about 2' cubed that lives next to my oldest friend's bed. Since it was a Fabio sort of cover, I'm guessing it was a Johanna Lindsay novel? There's also a Jude Deveraux time travel one. I think.

(there are perfectly justifiable reasons for my knowing this) (Really)

I bet you'd recognize the covers, though. They are the kind of high profile authors who commanded serious display space in bookstores in the 1980s (which might mean you're a little young).

yep! I remember this one now. My friend loaned it to me and I couldn't read it. But I think it is RSF, as it's set on another planet (I looked it up -- it's called Warrior's Woman).

A minor note not worth editing the post again for:

Having finally realized what Regency novels* are, I now have context for Madeline Robins's Point of Honour, which was another of my springtime airport book acquisitions. (A mystery/romance set in an alternate history version of the Regency. It feels like it should be a fantasy novel, but it really isn't.)

* Books for people who want to read more books like those Heyer wrote.

I've read Tooth and Claw and liked it a great deal; enough that I promptly loaned it to my father to read.

On the point of interspecies romance, there was a book I read called Chroniques de Majipoor that involved some of that thang, which appears to have been called Majipoor Chronicles in English. Specifically it's the first story, Thesme and the Ghayrog. Heh.

For interspecies fun and excitement, you might try "Golden Witchbreed" by Mary Gentle. I believe this falls squarely into the RSF genre and it was quite an eye-opener for me when I pulled it off the shelf around age 12 or so, from the regular SF section at the library rather than the Youth SF section.

It's been years since I read it but it sticks out in my memory as having a very distinct alien culture with interesting gender setup and dealing with interspecies relationships. It was also pretty racy as I recall, but that could also be the lens of time skewing a 12-year old's view of racy.

I haven't read any of Gentle's work. You sound like you're recommending Golden Witchbreed, but you may just be describing it as an example of interspecies relationship R/SF - it's not entirely clear.

It occurs to me that one complication with interspecies relationships in R/SF, depending on the nature of the species involved, is the taint of bestiality.

Argh -- although I the the Sharyn McCrumb dolphin sex is definitely bestiality ... not sure how I'd qualify the orca on human sexual assault in Startide Rising.

I don't particularly know where the bestiality lines would fall - I was just thinking of it as a hazard to be negotiated by authors and readers in dealing with interspecies relationships. You're right though - perhaps sentience all on its own means it's not a problem.

Both "Golden Witchbreed" and "Ancient Light" were reprinted in Britain about five years back in an omnibus edition called "Orthe", which is apparently not currently in print but may still be obtainable somewhere first-hand (and should certainly be obtainable second-hand) and may well be reprinted sometime: it was one of a more or less uniform edition of most of Mary Gentle's works, and the basic design is still being used for her latest novel, "Ilario", published only about six weeks ago.

A few warnings, though. "Golden Witchbreed" can certainly be read as R/SF and Mary Gentle says that "Golden Witchbreed" and "Ancient Light" were written as two halves of the one novel - but if you try reading "Ancient Light" as R/SF, the ending in particular is likely to come as a very unpleasant shock. And, even forgetting "Ancient Light", "Golden Witchbreed" does not have a HEA ending (in fact, while the books are very different in many ways, compare Ursula LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness"). Also, while I don't remember any hint of bestiality in Gentle's treatment of the interspecies relationship in "Golden Witchbreed", she has made something of a speciality in later novels of otherwise strong main characters in a submissive role in a sado-masochistic relationship ("Ilario" seems to be an exception - also, allowing for some odd gender roles, it can be read as almost straight romance/fantasy).

I believe time travel romances (usually the heroine travels into the past; but sometimes the hero travels to our time from the past, and sometimes one of them travels into the future) date from the 1980s.