Ken and Sonia are lecturers in a further education college whose principal, Morton Scregg, is a lecherous tyrant. One day, after a drunken lunch, Principal Scregg falls down the college stairs to his death. As the last to speak to him, Ken is accused of his murder. The death of Scregg and the injustice of being blamed for it, is a turning point in Ken's life. He and Sonia come to realise that there is a market for an assassination business dedicated to erasing all the evil Screggs of this world as a public service. At first, the business goes well, and they get a steady supply of clients who are victims of everyday bullies, cheats, and psychopaths. But Ken and Sonia soon find out that the "conflict deletion" profession is far more crowded than they had expected as they get drawn into a parallel universe of assassins and hit men. In a tense climax to this comedy thriller, Ken and Sonia are forced to commit the execution of the century, which they must complete satisfactorily and escape, or be "erased" themselves.

Chris Payne writes a hilarious surreal account of life as a university professor at a dysfunctional university in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. On the beautiful island of Cyprus, little works as you expect it to, from the primitive plumbing to the maniacal university bus service. The American Institute of Cyprus is a seat of higher learning like no other. The place is chaotically organised for the students who attend class only if they feel like it. They cheat on their exams, photocopy textbooks illicitly with university approval, and deliberately fail their courses to avoid military service. Meanwhile, the management spends its time devising all sorts of ingenious money-raising scams and schemes to cheat students and teachers alike, while the AIC owner's business strategy is to sell as many university degrees as he can alongside his cake shops and motorcycle franchises. But then, as everyone says, "this is Cyprus," an Edenic Mediterranean paradise where everyone is on the make and the only guiding principle is "money is money."

'Balikwas' is a Tagalog word, virtually untranslatable into English.It signifies a startling change, such as an awakening. It can also mean 'going over to the other side'. Chris Payne writes about making a change, a change of moving his life to the other side of the world when he and wife Loydz emigrated to The Philippines. The book is an account of what needed to be done at each end of the 'project', as they came to call it, but it also includes amusing asides about life and its quirks. It can be read as a simple 'how to do it' guide for anyone contemplating emigration, either to The Philippines or elsewhere. Or it could be seen as a comic account. Most of all though, it is an encouraging and life-affirming story of how, even late in life, one can still change one's life and enjoy new and interesting experiences in a far away country.

The professors at the American University of the Southern Balkans, AUSB, have become lazy, complacent and resistant to change, so when a new reforming departmental chair is appointed with a brief to shake them up, they mount a witch hunt to have him fired. At the same time the US president is trying to push forward a plan to replace all NATO airbases with stations of unmanned 'drones' capable of carrying nuclear weapons. He decides to sell the plan secretly and the first country to be approached is the small country in Southeast Europe where AUSB is located. An election is due and the pro-western prime minister must win if the plan is to succeed. The CIA agent who fixes the election is also the provost of the American university. Two political threads - the high crimes of government and the low stakes bitter politics of the university common room - are interwoven in this satire of intrigue, double-dealing and political corruption.