This book is a revealing insiders' account of the deteriorating special relationship between the United States and Romania in the last years of the Ceausescu dictatorship. The authors were the two chief diplomatic actors in the drama, on opposite sides of the dialogue in Bucharest: Roger Kirk as U.S. ambassador to Romania, Mircea Raceanu as the Romanian Foreign Ministry's chief of U.S. and Canadian affairs. They document the tangled web of state-to-state relations in a way few others could and personalize otherwise impersonal diplomacy, offering vivid portraits of the major players and an...

When her husband is offered the assignment of U.S. Naval attache in London in 1939, Lydia Chapin Kirk packs up her family and embarks on a lifelong journey, one in which she becomes a firsthand witness to the extraordinary world events of her time. Kirk's historical memoir offers a fascinating portrait of a remarkable life, told first from the perspective of a young girl in Erie, Pennsylvania, Paris, and Washington before World War I, and then from her husband's postings as U.S. naval attache and then as U.S. ambassador to Belgium, the Soviet Union, and Taiwan during the cold war. She brings...

When Ellen died Peter had hoped that his father would turn up for the funeral. He had only met him once in his life and then very briefly. He suspected that Nick didn't know at the time that he was his son. But Nick had failed to put in an appearance and Peter had learned that no one, including Nick's wife Monica or his two other children, had seen or heard anything of him for over twenty-six years.......'Shooting Marmalade continues where Windproof Beauty concluded although each novel is able to stand alone. The same characters are involved as they confront events and each other throughout...