Six stories, all of which start within a five-mile radius of 350 5th Avenue, the address of the Empire State Building, the original "Ground Zero." With this first book of five short stories and one novella, Russell Bittner believes that worlds can be discovered and described in a dewdrop, in a teardrop, in a leaky faucet-and that all that's required is a good magnifying glass, keen powers of observation, and a feel for how language might be made to form a picture in the reader's mind. NYC-fugheddaboud Brooklyn-is home to scoundrels and angels, derelicts and daredevils, high flyers, low flyers and every kind of flyer for every kind of service one human being is able to coerce, cheat, beggar or beat out of another. Russell captures that here in the key of C Minor-the key of melancholy.