A Hero Born by Jin Yong is a martial arts epic, retelling legends, the first in a series of 12 books, drawing on Chinese history, traditions, myths, and legends

In The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer bats the story out of the park again, with an unbelievable plot involving the CIA, Germany’s secret service, and others.

The new Chinese Superman, Red Son of Earth-30, and Sunshine Superman have all disappeared. Our favorite superhero, Kal-El, is next on the least.

The strength of this book, I felt, was in the interesting footnotes the editor provided at the end of each chapter

Colonel Sun by Robert Markham is the first novel featuring British secret agent James Bond, 007, not written by Ian Fleming, the original author

The author tries to understand why, and how, intelligence services around the world are targeting American higher education, and the implications from those actions

The author touches on Confucian and Daoist writings, famous novels, poetry, historic manuals, gardening and manual labor.

There is an interesting commentary on just how Lionel Giles, the translator, chose to translate each line of text. The classical Chinese language is very dense and many of Sun Tzu’s passages have unclear meaning

I, of course, could never relate to rich Asian immigrants, but still found the basic truths to be the same about every family.

The setting takes place close to a hotly contested election to the governorship of California where both candidates are trying to stay on the good side of the Chinese, knowing full well that American citizens despise having a foreign military presence in their midst.