When Vin Scully passed away in 2022, the city of Los Angeles lost its soundtrack. If you were able to deliver a eulogy for him, what might it include? What impact did he have on you? What do you carry forward from his legacy? Sixty-seven essayists—one representing each season of his career calling games for the Los Angeles Dodgers, from 1950 through 2016—reflect on the ways his professional and private life influenced them. The contributions include a range of stories and remembrances from those who knew and followed him. The consensus of the contributions is that Scully’s actions spoke louder than his well-recognized words. This collection includes fellow broadcasters as well as historians, players, journalists, celebrities, and others connected to the game of baseball, with each piece introduced by sports journalist Tom Hoffarth. Readers can consider Scully’s life through common themes: his sincerity, his humility, his professionalism, his passion for his faith, his devotion to his family, his insistence on remembering and giving context to important moments in the history of not just the game but the world in general, all wrapped up in a gift for weaving storytelling with accurate reporting, fellowship with performance art, humor, and connection.

Tom Hoffarth is an Associated Press award-winning journalist with more than forty years of experience reporting in Southern California, focusing on sports and the media. He has written for the Southern California News Group, the Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter, Angelus News, National Catholic Reporte, Los Angeles Business Journal, and Sports Business Journal. He is a coauthor (with Tom Kelly) of Tales from the USC Trojans Sideline: A Collection of the Greatest Trojans Stories Ever Told. Ron Rapoport worked as a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times for more than twenty years and is the author of Let’s Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks and the editor of The Lost Journalism of Ring Lardner (Nebraska, 2017).

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In the dark days after the devastating Pearl Harbor attacks during the spring of 1942, the United States was determined to show the world that the Axis was not invincible. Their bold plan? Bomb Tokyo. On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25s, known as the Doolittle Raiders, hit targets across Japan before escaping to China.

The eighth plane, however, did not follow the other raiders. In VANISHING ACT: The Enduring Mystery Behind the Legendary Doolittle Raid over Tokyo (St. Martin’s Press;) Retired US Air Force fighter pilot Dan Hampton uses never-before-published documents and photos in exclusive collaboration with Japanese researchers and access to some Doolittle Raiders’ descendants, to shed light on where this eighth plane went, reveal the story of a secret WWII mission and definitively solve the final mystery of the Doolittle Raid.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dan Hampton flew 151 combat missions during his twenty years (1986–2006) in the United States Air Force. For his service in the Iraq War, Kosovo conflict, and first Gulf War, Col. Hampton received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor, a Purple Heart, eight Air Medals with Valor, five Meritorious Service medals, and numerous other citations. He is a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School and USAF Special Operations School. A frequent guest on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC discussing foreign affairs and geopolitics, he has also appeared as an analyst on Bill O’Reilly, Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Anderson Cooper360. He is the nationally bestselling author of Viper Pilot, Lords of the Sky, The Hunter Killers, The Flight, Chasing the Demon, Vengeance, Valor, and a novel, The Mercenary.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet.

Larry Tye is the New York Times bestselling author of Bobby Kennedy and Satchel, as well as Demagogue, Superman, The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails, and coauthor, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. Previously an award-winning reporter at the Boston Globe and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, he now runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship. He lives on Cape Cod.

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Who doesn’t like vacations with ultimate relaxation preferences? The type of vacation a person takes depends upon individual desires. Most folks like to be wined-n-dined and pampered as if they’ve snuck into the 1/10 of 1% demographic.

A few eccentrics prefer different vacations. Developing the ability to ignore inconveniences that’s like a gym rat who refuses to believe their feet smell. DARREN, prefers these vacations. Being a backpack traveler, he’s just returned from his latest adventure and receives a call from his cousin informing him that their uncle, JORGE DaSILVA, would like to take a niece/nephew cruise. Jorge has lots of money. Darren becomes skeptical concerning the trip since this isn’t his idea of interesting adventure. RYAN mentions that Darren prefers adventures where the excitement comes from doing things off-thecuff. Street stall cuisine, park-bench accommodations, and having an AR-15 pointed at your skull.

Initially, Darren refuses to participate and various individuals including sister, GRETCHEN, try to change his mind. Manipulations eventually has him participating. Then, a monkey wrench gets thrown in when Jorge suffers a mild heart attack. He recovers, and the rivercruise vacation occurs. Things get stranger (if that’s possible…) Jorge tells Darren that he wishes he could’ve done these rough-n-tumble vacations when he was younger. Having just participated in a cruise, Darren wants to continue his backpack vacations right up until the day he’s forced to do the Barca-lounger thing. Eating pre-chewed meals through a straw.

About the Author:

This is not your conventional, sleep-inducing, writer’s biography. Individuals may experience chuckles. David Swanson is a writer/novelist who lives in Southwest Colorado. He writes non-fiction and fiction with a humorous/satirical bent. He’s just that passionate about writing in this style.

He did not obtain his Bachelor’s in creative writing from the University of Colorado, instead earning a B.A. in Biology. This degree opened up many doors in the area of outdoor, blue-collar-type jobs. The B.A. also dispelled the assertion that you can’t find a job with only a biology-B.A. It got him a U.S. Peace Corps forestry position. Mr. Swanson has won numerous regional awards for his writing. He’s been published. Name recognition is nice, but he’s confronted with the fact that literary entities pay him the money equivalent to that of the Bhutanese naval budget. A life-long obsession with comic book collecting has influenced the writing. Obviously, proving this isn’t possible.

He established a writing website (www.humorouswriter.com) where he posts short stories and essays. This posting of material to the site avoids lawsuits being filed against him. Mr. Swanson attended cartooning school from 1986-89. His time training and work as a cartoonist/illustrator has subconsciously influenced his writing (yeah right?).

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Winters in Montana can be deadly, but it wasn’t the cold that was killing Matthew Redd . . .
Gavin Kline, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Intelligence Directorate, is escorting a high-value prisoner with the intel to bring down a global conspiracy when their plane comes under attack. In the aftermath, much of Kline’s team is dead, but he recovers a phone from a member of the hit team that reveals another attack is imminent. This time they’re going after the man who was instrumental in capturing the prisoner and foiling their plans: Matthew Redd.

Ryan Steck is an editor, an author, and the founder and editor in chief of The Real Book Spy. Ryan has been named an “Online Influencer” by Amazon and is a regular columnist at CrimeReads. TheRealBookSpy.com has been endorsed by #1 New York Times bestselling authors Mark Greaney, C. J. Box, Kyle Mills, Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, and many others. A resident of Michigan, along with his wife and their six kids, Steck cheers on his beloved Detroit Tigers and Lions during the rare moments when he’s not reading or talking about books on social media.

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Johnny Mize was one of the greatest hitters in baseball’s golden age of great hitters. Born and raised in tiny Demorest, Georgia, in the northeast Georgia mountains, Mize emerged from the heart of Dixie as a Bunyonesque slugger, a quiet but sharp‑witted man from a broken home who became a professional player at seventeen, embarking on an extended tour of the expansive St. Louis Cardinals Minor League system.

Mize then spent fifteen seasons terrorizing Major League pitchers as a member of those Cardinals, the New York Giants of Mel Ott and Leo Durocher, and finally with the New York Yankees, who won a record five straight World Series with Mize as their ace in the hole—the best pinch hitter in the American League. Few hitters have combined such meticulous bat control with brute power the way Mize did. Mize was a line‑drive hitter who rarely struck out and also hit for distance, to all fields, and usually for a high average. Nicknamed the Big Cat. Tabbed as a can’t‑miss Hall of Famer, then all but forgotten, Mize spent twenty‑eight years waiting for the call from Cooperstown before he was finally inducted in 1981, delighting fans with his straightforward commentary and sly sense of humor during a memorable induction speech.

Jerry Grillo is a longtime journalist and author of The Music and Mythocracy of Col. Bruce Hampton: A Basically TrueBiography. His work has appeared in Georgia Trend, Atlanta Magazine, Paste Magazine, Newsday, and jambands.com, among other publications.

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New York Times bestselling author Ace Atkins enters new literary territory with DON’T LET THE DEVIL RIDE, a captivating new novel that finds a woman uncovering deadly secrets about her husband after he disappears. Atkins has penned an elevated thriller that tackles difficult themes while also delivering a totally entertaining story. How well do we know the people closest to us? How well do we know ourselves.

About the author: Ace Atkins is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author who started his writing career as a crime beat reporter in Florida. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is his thirtieth novel. His previous novels include eleven books in the Quinn Colson series and multiple true-crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. In 2010, he was chosen by Robert B. Parker’s family to continue the iconic Spenser series, adding ten novels to the franchise. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his family.

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Randy Wayne White is the bestselling and award-winning author of the prolific and longstanding Doc Ford series. In 2022, Randy endured Hurricane Ian on Sanibel Island in Florida, which caused historic damage, destroying houses and knocking out the only bridge to the island. Randy stayed on the island through the storm, unreachable for a tenuous period. Now, he’s rebuilding, like everyone else on the island.

This dramatic experience became the inspiration for his new Doc Ford novel ONE DEADLY EYE (Hanover Square Press) as Ford rides out the deadliest storm to hit the island in a century and tries to stop a gang of criminals who swoop in to take advantage of the evacuation and pillage and kill, during the twelve hours of chaos that follow the passing of a storm’s dangerous eye.

Here, White combines his expertise of nature writing, Florida, and masterful craft of crime thrillers, to bring us ONE DEADLY EYE.

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK:

A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.

No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s most dangerous prison, including a serial killer—the Vulture Monk—who has a taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a priceless art collection.

Doc has a lot at stake—the lives of his fiancée, Hannah Smith, and their son, plus the fate of his hipster pal, Tomlinson, whose sailboat has disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest threat of all, though, is a force that cannot be escaped—a Category Five hurricane that, minute by minute, melds sins of the past with Florida's precarious future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Randy Wayne White is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Doc Ford series. In 2011, White was named a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Society. A fishing and nature enthusiast, he has also written extensively for Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, Playboy and Men's Health. He lives on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he was a light-tackle fishing guide for many years, and spends much of his free time windsurfing, playing baseball, and hanging out at Doc Ford's Rum Bar & Grille. Sharks Incorporated is his middle grade series, including Fins and Stingers.

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