The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 65 This Lower World: A Felix Culpepper Novel Richard Major, IndieBooks, 2020, $9.99/paperback, 144 pages. “More Misdemeanours by Dr. Felix Culpepper” is the subtitle of this new installment in the 16-book cycle, Wygefortis, a gothic fairy tale for adults that recounts what the author describes as the “epic misdeeds” of Felix Culpepper and his sidekick, lover and nemesis Margot ffontaines-Laigh. When he isn’t teaching classics at St Wygefortis’ College, Cambridge, Dr. Culpepper is one of the world’s most in-demand assassins-for-hire. It is safe to say that few other Cambridge fellows have Felix’s experience of life—or of death. But now he takes a break from his unofficial role as assassin of choice to the British establishment to right some wrongs, and eliminate some rival killers, on his own account. From New York to Venice, Culpepper cheerfully takes on the international aristocracy of murder. But then, amid the fragrant mellowness of England’s heartwoods, he faces a more disturbing—and violent—moral dilemma than ever before. Has he finally met his match? Richard Major is a teacher, academic and journalist, as well as a novelist. He was educated at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and has degrees in history, literature and theology. The spouse of FSO Kristen Fresonke, a political officer in the Palestinian Affairs Unit, he is currently posted in Jerusalem, where he does public diplomacy work. The couple have two teenage children and have previously served in South Africa, Hungary, Slovenia and India. Piracies: Or, in a Time of Novichok Richard Major, IndieBooks, 2019, $14.85/paperback, 256 pages. Pepyeses Island appears on no map, is hidden from satellite surveillance and has even slipped outside the Earth’s 24 time zones. Yet Dr. Felix Culpep- per is standing on this imaginary land, while the governor-general, in plumed helmet, welcomes him in the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. For what purpose has the British establishment hidden this fragment of empire for 200 years? Does it hold the key to a terrorist plot of unpar- alleled malevolence? Will Felix be allowed to leave with this knowledge—or his life? Piracies is the tenth installment in the Wygefortis series, following This Lower World . Democracy at the Brink George Kennedy and Yvonne Merrill, SETAF Publishing, 2021, $20/ paperback, e-book available, 348 pages. This novel, the sixth in George Alfred Kennedy’s Crosshairs series, focuses on the rise of former vice president and acting Secretary of State Alfred Turner to become the second African Ameri- can president of the United States. Following a lengthy and bitter presidential campaign, the much younger Turner defeats the 76-year-old, one-term Republican President Edward Stanton, and is sworn in as the 47th president on Jan. 20, 2021. Alarmed by the dramatic and unexpected reversal of their political fortunes, congressional Republicans and their alt- right allies around the country vow to topple the new Turner administration in league with the former president. Will they succeed? George Kennedy is a retired Senior Foreign Service officer whose diplomatic career took him to seven countries and culminated in his appointment as consul general in Toronto. He serves on the advisory boards of the United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona and the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona, and is active in his community as an independent business owner. His memoir, Cotton Fields to Summits: The View from Contested Ground , was published in 2018 by SETAF Publishing. Yvonne Merrill, a citizen and environmental advocate, has served as a writing consultant and editor for numerous authors.