16 New books by Peace Corps writers — May and June, 2022

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards.

We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.

 See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a copy along with a few instructions.

In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf.

Please, please join in our Third Goal effort and review a book(s)!!!

Our Grand Adventure: The trials and triumphs of India-44
by Tom Corbett (India 1966-68)
Papertown Digital Solutions
June 2022
540 pages
$15.99 (paperback)

A new and improved version of the Peace Corps memoir  It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.

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The Gecko in the Bathtub: Encounters with Marvelous Creatures
by Janina Marie Fuller (Philippines 1978-80)
with illustrations by Maggie Demorest
Peace Corps Writers
June 2022
178 pages
$17.50 (paperback)

In encounters with an array of creatures, from both domesticated and wild animals inhabiting my Louisiana backyard to denizens of the Amazon I present these stories to illuminate our inseparability from the life around us by capturing peak moments in the natural world.

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Challenging Pregnancy
by Genevieve Grabman (Kyrgyz Republic 1996-98)
University of Iowa Press
210 pages
April 2022
$17.65 (Paperback), $9.99 (Kindle)

Genevieve Grabman recounts being pregnant with identical twins whose circulatory systems were connected in a rare condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.

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Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call
Harlan Russell Green (Turkey 1964–66)
Peace Corps Writers
May 2022
143 pages
$9.99 (paperback), $8.95 (Kindle)

A Peace Corps Volunteer answers Kennedy’s call to build peaceful communities at home and abroad.

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The Razor’s Edge: Embezzlement, Corruption and Development in Ethiopia
Robert  Gurevich (Thailand 1963–1965)
Peace Corps Writers
June 2022
$18.98 (paperback), $6.98 (Kindle)

What’s it like being the only expatriate manager of a multi-million dollar development project in a foreign country with a staff of over 200, and to have to start off dealing with a major embezzlement on a previous project that occurred prior to your arrival?

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Journeying Out Alone: Being Volume 3 of The Gathered Words
A memoir with a portion on the Peace Corps
John Gregory Hall (Iran 1970-72)
Independently published
February 2022
$8.00 (paperback)

Journeying out from home in Mulberry, Texas, through school, the army and New York City, and London, finally to Iran, was passing out of familiar ground and company, I became “the Other.”

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Tokyo–ing! Three Novellas
by Eric Madeen (Gabon 1981-83)
Absolute Author Publishing House
99 pages
May 2022
$8.99 (Paperback), $2.99 (Kindle)

Tokyo-ing! is an apt title for this trio of tales that chime with anyone even slightly interested in Asia’s most dynamic metropolis and its glazing of layers – be they cultural, sexual … or taking-wing exuberant.

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Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You …: Peace Corps Remembered – Bogota 1962–64
by Carl Stephani (Colombia 1962–64)
Independently published
June 2022
237 pages
$6.95 (paperback)

This book, taken from my letters, describes how I experienced the Peace Corps as a Peace Corps Volunteer when the program was barely starting in July of 1962. 

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Knock Off The Hat: A Clifford Waterman Gay Philly Mystery
by Richard Stevenson (aka) Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64)
Amble Press
224 pages
April 2022
$17.99 (Paperback), $8.69 (Kindle)

Waterman delves into the sudden and extraordinary wave of gay-bashing in 1940s Philadelphia.

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A Five Finger Feast: Two Years in Kazakhstan, Lessons from the Peace Corps
by Tim  Suchsland (Kazakhstan 2007–09), author and illustrator
Peace Corps Writers
May 2022
395 pages
$19.99 (paperback)

A Five Finger Feast is a collection of coming-of-age stories set to the backdrop of Kazakhstan, with the ups and the downs, the excitement and the thrill of living abroad as a young person and working in the Peace Corps.  

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Project Namahana
by John Teschner (Kenya 2003-05)
Forge Books
304 pages
June 2022
$14,99 (Kindle); $27.99 (Hardback); $17.86 (audiobook)

Two men, unified by a string of disappearances and deaths, search for answers—and                                 salvation—in the jungles of Kaua‘i.

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The World Against Her Skin : A Sons Novel
by John  Thorndike (El Salvador 1966-68)
Beck & Branch Publishers
April 2022
$15.00 (paperback), $4.99 (Kindle), $17.46 (audiobook)

A biographical novel about families, love and loss in which much is remembered and much imagined.

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The Last of His Mind: A Year in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s
by John  Thorndike (El Salvador 1966-68)
Swallow Press
2021
$18.82 (paperback), $27.94 (hardcover), $7.99 (Kindle)

An Alzheimer’s caregiver living with his father.

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My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road: Part of the Yin and Yang of Travel Series
by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73)
Cyberwit.net
May 2022
63 pages
$15.00 (paperback)

The author reflects on his fifty years of travel miscalculations and disasters and how and why he travels changed over the years, as has who he traveled with.

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Backskatter: A Botch Experiment Creates The Ultimate Weapon
(novel)
by Tom Wangler (Nigeria 1974-76)
Dancing Moon Press
344 pages
June 2022
$4.95 (Kindle); $14.95 (Paperback)

The year is 1999. The much anticipated “Y2K” is but three short months away. Hidden among the many events of the year was a little-known incident that happened in the high desert area of eastern Oregon during a four-day period.

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The Grievers’ Group
by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69)
Stay Thirsty Press
303 pages
May 2022
$2.99 (Kindle)

Three evenings a week the North End Grievers’ Group meets in Tacoma, Washington, at the home of its therapist, a woman with her own bizarre life story. The group has six members who mourn their losses in vastly different ways.