Wayne Soini

Called "The Poet Laureate of Radio" by critics, Norman Corwin was the top writer at CBS when CBS reigned supreme in radio, and when radio itself dominated public attention. This biography tells the story of Norman's unlikely rise from a triple-decker tenement on Bremen Street in East Boston to the top rung of radio writers during the Golden Age of Radio. A self-taught writer who never graduated from high school, he learned what audiences craved, and he gave it to them. His nuanced "theater of the mind" dramas, tender love stories, and witty comedies were hits talked about long after they were broadcast, and, when his scripts were published, became bestsellers. The week after Pearl Harbor, Norman's show "We Hold These Truths" was broadcast to the largest radio audience ever. His V-E Day broadcast on May 8, 1945, "On a Note of Triumph," made a similarly enduring mark and still constitutes the gold standard for wartime drama.

Cold Case CluesOn May 21, 1932, Arthur Oker, a mild-mannered Finnish tailor, was brutally murdered in his shop in the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts. While this unsolved crime terrified local residents, their fears increased after another horrifying murder, that of Swedish immigrant and fellow churchgoer Augusta Johnson in her home on Halloween night in 1933. Following the crimes, authorities searched every house and building in Rockport, and some 2,500 households were interviewed. A reward was posted, a mystic volunteered her services and local children wearing badges provided by a breakfast cereal company joined in the search. However, the crimes went unsolved. Local authors Robert Fitzgibbon and Wayne Soini reveal long-lost details about the crime, the investigation and a surprise suspect from the state police archives.

The relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his two most influential ancestors--his mother and "the Virginia planter," a slaveholder, a shadowy grandfather he likely never met--is rarely mentioned in Lincoln biographies or in history texts. However, Lincoln, forever linked to the cause of freedom and equality in America, spoke candidly of the planter to his law partner, Billy Herndon, who recalled his words, "My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or ever hope to be I get from my mother--God bless her." This vital two-generation relationship was nonetheless problematic. In Lincoln's boyhood the planter was a figure he ridiculed while in his young manhood the planter evolved into a role model whom Lincoln revered and associated with Jefferson's overdue ideal that "all men are created equal." Thus galvanized "by blood" to educate himself, to stand for election and to oppose slavery, Lincoln quit farming at age 22. This book explains how he thus followed an inherited family dream.

MAY 7, 1945 (PARIS, FRANCE): Germany has surrendered but U.S. Army censors are holding back that fact. Accepting military orders, all of the correspondents - except one - say nothing. Working up to and then beyond the climactic German surrender at 2:41 a.m., May 7, 1945, in the former French schoolhouse in Reims, France that had become Eisenhower's headquarters, the novel quickly shifts to the Hotel Scribe in Paris. There, as war correspondents write their stories and await the censor's release, they learn that German radio has begun broadcasting news of a surrender still unknown to the people of the United States. Stunned by military hypocrisy, one of the correspondents - a legendary newspaperman here called Fred Morrissey - challenges authority and desperately seeks some way to smuggle out the biggest story of the war. As he bucks the passivity of his peers and fully accepts the certainty of instant retaliation by his own government, he works to tell people back home that Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe is over.Behind this suspenseful novel stands a true story of the end of World War II, misunderstood in 1945 and to this day not widely enough known, when history turned on the act of a single champion who rose to defend the people's right to know against all odds and opposition. Presented here as fiction for the very first time, Germany Surrenders is an exciting historical novel that will grip anyone interested in World War II, war correspondents or the moral issues and complications that arise when fighting censorship.

In late 1922, Judge Emil Fuchs purchased the woebegone Boston Braves--primarily to bring his ailing friend, Christy Mathewson, back into the game he loved so much. A true fan, Judge Fuchs poured his fortune into the team, intent on giving Boston's long-suffering National League fans a winner. He introduced Ladies' Days, contracted to have Braves games broadcast on radio, and successfully campaigned to allow Sunday baseball in Boston. Moreover, he gave the fans a competitive team, climaxed by the Braves' dramatic pennant race with the New York Giants in 1933. The Depression, however, weakened his financial position to the point where in 1935 Fuchs was forced to give up the team. Using Judge Fuchs' unfinished autobiography, the memories of his son who worked in the organization, and extensive additional research, this story of an owner and an era is complete.