Turning Stones

Turning Stones

Rating:  Turning Stones: My Days and Nights With Children at Risk, by Marc Parent. Ballantine Books (1998), 400 pages. This is the memoir of a caseworker for Emergency Children’s Services in New York City. The stories the author tells of the children...
The Great Mortality

The Great Mortality

Rating:  The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, by John Kelly. HarperCollins (2005), 356 pages. Thirty million people dead in Europe, a third of the Middle East wiped out, and China...
Firmin

Firmin

Rating:  Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, by Sam Savage.  Coffee House Press (2006), 148 pages. This little novella is light on plot, but the writing is so lovely a storyline hardly matters.  It’s hard to believe this is Savage’s...