The Republic of China calendar (Chinese: 民國紀元; pinyin: Mínguó jìyuán) is the method of numbering years currently used in the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan, Kinmen, and Matsu). It was used in mainland China from 1912 until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Following the Chinese imperial tradition of using the sovereign's era name and year of reign, official ROC documents use the Republic (Chinese: 民國; pinyin: Mínguó; literally "The Country of the People") system of numbering years in which the first year was 1912, the year of the founding of the Republic of China. For example, 2012 is the "101st year of the Republic". Months and days are numbered according to the Gregorian calendar.

To find out the ROC year equivalent to any Gregorian calendar (CE) year, subtract 1911 from the Gregorian year. For example: 2012 - 1911 = 101st year of the Republic.

The Gregorian calendar was adopted by the nascent Republic of China effective 1 January 1912 for official business, but the general populace continued to use the traditional Chinese calendar. The status of the Gregorian calendar was unclear between 1916 and 1921 while China was controlled by several competing warlords each supported by foreign colonial powers. From about 1921 until 1928 warlords continued to fight over northern China, but the Kuomintang or Nationalist government controlled southern China and used the Gregorian calendar. After the Kuomintang reconstituted the Republic of China on 10 October 1928, the Gregorian calendar was officially adopted, effective 1 January 1929. The People's Republic of China has continued to use the Gregorian calendar since 1949.

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL (born 28 April 1960 in Cardenden, Fife), is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.

He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he moved to Tottenham, London for four years and then rural France for six while he developed his career as a novelist. He was a Literature tutor at the University of Edinburgh, where he retains an involvement with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The 'standard biography' of Rankin, a Scot, states that before becoming a full-time novelist he worked as a grape-picker, swineherd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist, college secretary and punk musician.

He lives in Edinburgh with his wife Miranda and their two sons Jack and Kit.

Rankin did not set out to be a crime writer. He thought his first novels Knots and Crosses and Hide and Seek were mainstream books, more in keeping with the Scottish traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson and even Muriel Spark (the subject of Rankin's uncompleted Ph.D. thesis). He was disconcerted by their classification as genre fiction. Scottish novelist Allan Massie, who tutored Rankin while Massie was writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, reassured him by saying, who would want to be a dry academic writer when "they could be John Buchan?"^{[citation needed]}

Anne Perry (born 28 October 1938) is an English author of historical detective fiction. Perry was convicted of the murder of her friend's mother in 1954.

Born Juliet Marion Hulme in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Dr. Henry Hulme, an English physicist, Perry was diagnosed with tuberculosis as a child and sent to the Caribbean and South Africa in hopes that a warmer climate would improve her health. She rejoined her family when her father took a position as Rector of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand when she was 13. She attended Christchurch Girls' High School, then located in what became the Cranmer Centre.

Together with her school friend Pauline Parker, Hulme murdered Parker's mother, Honora Rieper, in June 1954. Hulme's parents were in the process of separating, and she was supposed to go to South Africa to stay with a relative. The two teenage girls, who had created a rich fantasy life together populated with famous actors such as James Mason and Orson Welles, did not want to be separated. They had hoped to go to England with Hulme's father after the divorce.