Books are a great Father’s Day gift idea, especially for dads who already have an overflowing collection of ties. The following suggestions are available online.

The Machine Murders: Island Buoys by CJ Abazis, translated into English by Kalliopy Paleos, is published by software company Publisto Ltd. (Amazon/Audible 2021) in its first foray into the commercial thriller market. In the book, Manos Manu visits the Greek island of Mykonos to attend a friend’s wedding. During his stay, he witnesses the hunt for a serial killer who abducts and kills his victims, puts a chain through their bodies and releases them into the sea in the form of buoys with the word “free” written on them.

Clues abound as local police focus on boat rentals, hotel reservations, DNA samples and the victims’ latest sightings, but the case continues to baffle them while drawing attention to social networks. Although technically on vacation, Manu, a data scientist who gave up a lucrative job in Silicon Valley because he “wanted to run several models on human actors”, now works for Interpol in Singapore and decides to help investigation. His problem ? The machine learning system he developed to track killers through their use of online media is untested, the datasets he needs are lacking, and suspicion follows him no matter what he tries. TO DO. His wealthy friends also view him with pity for joining law enforcement, the Greek police don’t understand his methods, and his bosses in Singapore believe he is spending too many resources and putting the whole program under the microscope. unnecessary scrutiny of the world. media.

As the victims multiply, the crisis deepens and the machine learning models of Manu’s system reveal correlations impossible to understand. Although the events described in the book are fictional, similar machine learning technologies are now used by law enforcement around the world to track calls, clicks, online pauses and suspicious behavior. It should be noted that CJ Abazis runs a software company in Athens, Greece. More information about the book is available online: https://themachinemurders.com.

For those looking to improve their backgammon skills, longtime National Herald contributor Constantinos E. Scaros has written an easy-to-read guide called Play Fearless Backgammon. The book is dedicated to his father, Emmanuel C. Scaros, who spent many afternoons playing with him. The book is aimed at players of all levels, beginners, intermediate level players and even experts looking to extend their mastery. Scaros offers information to help players “win more games than you lose and learn new strategies you never thought of before” while having fun. The book includes helpful illustrations to guide the reader towards mastering this ancient board game whose roots date back some 5,000 years to the Middle East. Backgammon is considered the national game of many Eastern Mediterranean countries, including Greece and Cyprus. The book is available online.

For dads interested in historical fiction, the Greek novel Tokei Maru by Eleni Andreadou and Zachos Samoladas attempts to connect historical fact with fiction, envisioning the life and times of the captain of the Japanese ship that saved the refugees from certain death. The book follows the story of the captain of the Tokei Maru from 1863 Kagoshima, Japan, to 1931 Osaka. In the years that followed, historical events, such as the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, the naval patrols of the Japanese fleet in the Mediterranean Sea in the last days of World War I, the burning of Smyrna and the rescue Greeks and Armenians in 1922, as well as the political uprising in the Far East in the mid-1920s, mark the fictional life of the captain of the Tokei Maru.

Tokei Maru by Eleni Andreadou and Zachos Samoladas, published by Barbounakis Publications, is available online: www.barbounakis.com.