'Girls of Tender Age': A memoir of growing up in 1950s Hartford

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, a Hartford native who previously used the city as a setting for her novel, "Masters of Illusion: A Novel of the Connecticut Circus Fire," writes directly about her South End childhood in her latest book, "Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir." According to Kirkus Reviews, the work "intertwines delightful stories from childhood with a grim chronicle of a sexual predator (Bob Malm) whose murder of the author's grade-school classmate has haunted her for decades."