Think Xena, Warrior Princess. Or Joan of Arc. That’s the model for The Cahena, a powerful woman ruler who faces a powerful invading army. Carthage has just been sacked and now a 40,000 man army is heading to take her lands, too. Set in the Seventh Century, Cahena is mostly a historical novel told by a Saxon fighter who joins The Cahena’s forces as a strategist. His relationship with The Cahena becomes something more. The battle scenes scintillate with realism. I’ve admired Manly Wade Wellman’s versatility in writing science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and westerns. Wellman’s Cahena is a first-rate historical novel with plenty of action and suspense. It was published by Doubleday in hardcover in 1986. I’ve never seen a paperback reprint of Cahena.

I laughed out loud several times while watching City Island. Andy Garcia plays a prison guard with a secret. Garcia’s character yearns to be an actor. Secretly, he has been taking an acting class while telling his wife, played by Julianna Margulies, that he’s going to a poker game. Meanwhile, Garcia’s son has a fetish for large women (and food) and his daughter, who he thinks is hard at work at college, has been working as a stripper. A couple wild card elements rock Garcia’s world with hilarious consequences. This is a very clever movie. Don’t miss this excellent screw-ball comedy! GRADE: A-

I’ve been impressed by Michael Gruber’s previous novels, Tropic of Night, Valley of Bones, and Night of the Jaguar. The Good Son begins with a peace conference in Pakistan that’s ambushed and the scholarly participants, including their billionaire sponsor, are held hostage. The son of one of the participants, Theo, just happens to be a member of an elite U.S. Army unit. Theo and his father concoct a scheme to get the U.S. military to rescue the hostages. However, the heart of this book is the survival strategies of Theo’s mother, one of the hostages. Sonia, knowing the culture and trained in Jungian analysis, turns herself into an interpreter of dreams of her guards. Her dream interpretations manipulate her captors and change the dynamic of the hostage crisis. Gruber always delivers unusual novels. I enjoyed The Good Son a lot. GRADE: B+
(Thanks to the North Tonawanda Public Library for providing this book.)

Spies, like vampires, are hot right now so it comes as no surprise that the USA Network is launching a Summer series called Covert Affairs tonight. Be warned: this is a 90-minute debut. Check your local listings for times in your area. The executive producer of this series is Doug Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity. Piper Perabo plays Annie Walker, a rookie spy who has to learn the ropes quickly if she’s going to survive. For a Sneak Peek, click here. A couple months from now, Nikita will debut on the CW, yet another version of the French noir thriller, La Femme Nikita. Hot, sexy spies…who needs James Bond?

Finally, Summer TV ceases to be a wasteland of World Cup games and LeBron specials. The Closer begins Season Six tonight. Kyra Sedgwick and her talented cast returns with new cases to solve. Following The Closer on TNT tonight is a new program based on Tess Gerritsen’s crime novels, Rizzoli & Isles. Angie Harmon (Law & Order, Women’s Murder Club) and Sasha Alexander (NCIS) star. Looks good.

Tonight, PBS Masterpiece Mystery will broadcast Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet. I’ve seen the 1974 movie version of Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney as Poirot. I have not seen the made-for-TV version from 2001 starring Alfred Molina as Poirot. Agatha Christie published her classic novel in 1934. It had the title of Murder in the Calais Coach to avoid confusion with Graham Greene’s Orient Express. Later, the title was changed back to Christie’s original title. Murder on the Orient Express would make any list of Christie’s TOP TEN mysteries, maybe even the TOP FIVE. The crime is ingenious and the solution is mind-boggling. If you haven’t read the book or seen the films, you’re in for a Big Surprise when Poirot announces his solution to the murder.

If you’re looking for a graphic book that presents the history of Philosophy in a clever and entertaining fashion, ACTION PHILOSOPHERS! is the book for you. Writer Fred Van Lente and artist Ryan Dunlavey’s antics make this book a joy to browse. Never quite grasped Schopenhauer’s philosophy? Wonder what Hegel was up to? These guys make it clear. From the Pre-Socratics to Jacques Derrida, ACTION PHILOSOPHERS! with its goofy illustrations and cunning wit delights and enlightens. Don’t miss this one! GRADE: A

First a confession: I’m a hopeless Jack Vance fan. So everything you read here should be taken in that context. I consider Jack Vance one of the greatest science fiction writers ever. But Vance is much more than a genre writer. I firmly believe we’ll see Jack Vance volumes in the Library of America someday just like Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft. This Subterranean Press book collects stories Vance published between 1948 to 1959. Some stories, frankly, are better than others. But, Vance was learning his craft during these years so I find it fascinating to see the growth from story to story. Here’s the Table of Contents:
* Introduction
* Hard-Luck Diggings (1948)
* The Temple of Han (1951)
* The Masquerade on Dicantropus (1951)
* Abercrombie Station (1952)
* Three-Legged Joe (1953)
* DP! (1953)
* Shape-Up (1953)
* Sjambak (1953)
* The Absent-Minded Professor (1954)
* When the Five Moons Rise (1954)
* The Devil on Salvation Bluff (1955)
* Where Hesperus Falls (1956)
* The Phantom Milkman (1956)
* Dodkin’s Job (1959)

Bill Crider wrote glowingly about David Grann’s previous book, The Lost City of Z, so I figured I’d take a chance on The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsessoin. And I’m glad I did. Grann is a talented writer and has a keen eye for the weird and usual. This book is a collection of his non-fiction articles, mostly published in The New Yorker. The title article, “Mysterious Circumstances: The Strange Death of a Sherlock Holmes Fanatic,” deals with the possible murder of Richard Lancelyn Green, a Holmes expert. “Trial By Fire” explores the case of Cameron Todd Willingham who may have been innocent of the crime he was executed for. Grann tells the stories of prison gangs, a death-squad real estate agent, and a legendary stick-up man. For sports fans, Grann reports on Rickey Henderson’s obsessive quest to get back to the big leagues. If you want to read some high quality reporting, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes gets my recommendation. GRADE: A

Kelley Wins First Prize in ACM Student Research Competition

Patrick Kelley, a PhD student in the Computation, Organizations and Society program of the Institute for Software Research, won first place in the graduate category of the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Student Research Competition Grand Finals.

Kelley, who is co-advised by Lorrie Cranor and Norman Sadeh, won for his research on a “nutrition label” for online privacy – a standardized label that communicates a website’s privacy policies in a way that is as clear and as understandable as the nutrition labels on food packaging. Development of the privacy label concept is continuing in the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory directed by Cranor.

Kelley received the first place award, which includes a total of $1,000 in prize money and a medal, at the ACM Awards Banquet in San Francisco on June 26. The Student Research Competition is sponsored by Microsoft Research.