THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2023 43 broadcasting with the BBC World Service in London, where she met Macy. The couple served together in India, Haiti, Tunisia, and Afghanistan. Roshan Lall has written for numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Economist, and The New York Times. Holding an M.A. in creative writing and a Ph.D. in creative writing/critical research, both from the University of East Anglia, she is a lecturer in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London, and writes This Week, Those Books. Ivan and Phoebe Oksana Lutsyshyna, translated by Nina Murray, Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023, $26.95/hardcover, e-book available, 425 pages. Ivan and Phoebe are a young, married couple who were active as students in the Ukrainian independence movement of the 1990s. The story moves between small-town Uzhgorod, where Ivan grew up in a traditional family, and the big cities of Kyiv and Lviv, where the protests took place. Ivan and Phoebe grapple with the trauma of surviving the revolution—Ivan refuses to talk about his torture at the hands of the KGB, while Phoebe uses poetry to describe her experience. Oksana Lutsyshyna, a Ukrainian author and poet who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, was awarded the Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize in fiction, two of the most prestigious literary awards in Ukraine, for this book. Her research interests center on the issue of metropolitan modernity and Central and Eastern European identity in literature. She has also written a collection of poetry. Translator Nina Murray is a Foreign Service officer and an award-winning poet. She won the 2021 Ukrainian Institute London Prize for Ukrainian Literature in Translation and is the author of five collections of poetry, including her most recent, Glapthorn Circular: A Gleaner's Journal. Murray served in Vilnius, Toronto, and Moscow before becoming director of the Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Arts Envoy Program in Washington, D.C. She has been on leave since 2021. Lady Joanna’s Bed Rebecca Nugent, independently published, 2023, $15.99/paperback, e-book available, 373 pages. When her Aunt Alexandra dies, Sandy Morgan inherits the entire estate— including a mysterious antique bed hidden in a secret room of her aunt’s home. Sandy and her childhood friend, Kella, take turns in the bed, where they dream of sexual encounters with men from other times and places. As the dreams become more realistic, Sandy works to uncover the mystery behind the magical bed. She and Kella travel to long-ago Iceland, Denmark, Ireland, and elsewhere, experiencing “amazing nights of passion and romance” in the secret room. Rebecca Nugent is the spouse of retired Foreign Service Officer Allen Nugent. She and her husband were posted to Rangoon, Asunción, Guangzhou, Canberra, Bangkok, and U.S. Embassy Koror in Airai, Palau. Lady Joanna’s Bed is Nugent’s third novel but her first romance work. She lives and writes in South Carolina. Caleb Johnson Mountain Man: For Hearth and Home: A Frontier Western Adventure Charles Ray, independently published, 2023, $8.99/paperback, e-book available, 104 pages. Charles Ray is back with another book in his Caleb Johnson Mountain Man series. This time Caleb, Flora, and their furry sidekicks, Dog and Snuffy, are planning to go hunting near the Colorado–Wyoming border. Along the way they encounter two bad guys who are shooting buffalo and beating up an unarmed stranger. Caleb steps in to stop the mischief, and that’s when he learns about a nearby community being threatened by a rancher looking to drive the settlers off their land. Caleb’s crew heads into town to put a stop to the rancher’s plans. This book is just one of several published by Charles Ray in recent years. He is the author of numerous mysteries and Western series, as well as several leadership books. Ray served for 20 years in the U.S. Army and then 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, including as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, before retiring in 2012 and beginning a new career as an author.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=