38 NOVEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Raul Rasay joined the Foreign Service as a security engineering o cer in 2006. He has served in Washington, Mexico City, Bogotá, and Moscow. He is currently posted in Rome. Operation Body Snatch: A Novel of the Vietnam War Charles Ray, Dusty Saddle Publishing, 2024, $0.99/e-book, digital only, 98 pages. Captain Roger Malik and his commando team are sent across the border to nd and capture an enemy courier carrying plans for a devastating new operation against friendly forces. ey don’t know the courier’s identity or schedule and are pressured to complete the mission as quickly as possible. An impossible mission—but Malik and his men thrive on the impossible. is book is one of several published by Ambassador (ret.) Charles Ray in 2024, including e Lost Patrol, Rendezvous at Phouvong, and e Last Election. 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. Bridge to Tomorrow: Cold War: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, Part Two Helena P. Schrader, Cross Seas Press, 2024, $23.95/paperback, e-book available, 516 pages. In part two of an intended trilogy based on historical events, Berlin is under siege. More than 2 million civilians must receive food, fuel, and medicine by air—or surrender to the Soviets. USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin; they are about to deliver milk, our, and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile, two women pilots are ying an air ambulance carrying malnourished and abandoned children to freedom in the West. Helena Schrader lived in Germany for 26 years, earning a PhD in history from the University of Hamburg before becoming a Foreign Service o cer in 2005. She retired from the Foreign Service in 2018 and now writes full-time from an island in Greece. As an FSO, she spent most of her career in Europe and Africa; her last post was as an economic o cer in Addis Ababa. She has previously published 18 historical novels. Dead Hand James Stejskal, Double Dagger Books, 2023, $16.99/paperback, e-book available, 269 pages. In this second novel by James Stejskal, a Foreign Service family member, Russia has won the war in Ukraine and is eyeing the Baltics next. When a spy deep in the Kremlin contacts his handlers and mentions a code word for a Russian plan to start and win a nuclear war, it sets o alarm bells in Washington. A legendary CIA o cer is sent to meet the Russian spy, and former Special Forces and CIA operator Joshua Devlin is coaxed out of retirement to be his backup, with promises that the job will be little more than babysitting. But things go sideways, initiating a chain of events that throws Devlin back into a deadly world where failure could mean nuclear Armageddon. James Stejskal has been married to Ambassador (ret.) Wanda Nesbitt since 1997. During Nesbitt’s Foreign Service career, the two were assigned to Namibia, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, and Washington, D.C. Stejskal is also the author of Mission Iran (2024). Jackleg Boys Mark G. Wentling, Pegasus Publishers, 2024, $19.99/paperback, e-book available, 506 pages. Jackleg Boys is a ctional account that traces the lives of the author’s great grandfather and his younger brother, who were teenagers when they ed their fth-generation plantation home in Virginia during the U.S. Civil War. ey made their way to Texas, where they became cowhands and went on cattle drives to Kansas, going through innumerable trials along the way. With the law on their heels, they escaped to Florida, where the story ends quite di erently for each brother. Mark Wentling is a retired USAID Senior Foreign Service (Continued on page 45)
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