shrouded skeleton statue

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Collage of favorite books

    Daryl's Favorite Books of 2025

    Season’s Readings everyone! As is generally true, there have been some marvelous books published in 2025, and I’m thrilled to share my favorites with you. I’ve listed these books in alphabetical order…

  • Author Travis Baldree and his latest novel, Brigands & Breadknives

    Interview With an Author: Travis Baldree

    Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate…

  • Author D.J. Waldie and his latest book, Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire

    Interview With an Author: D.J. Waldie

    D.J. Waldie is a historian of Los Angeles, a memoirist, and a translator. He is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (1995), Where Are We Now: Notes from Los Angeles (2005), Becoming Los Angeles…

  • Author Eric Heisserer and his debut novel, Simultaneous

    Interview With an Author: Eric Heisserer

    Eric Heisserer is the Academy Award–nominated screenwriter of Arrival and the creator of the Netflix series Shadow and Bone. He lives in Los Angeles. His debut novel is Simultaneous and he recently…

  • Author Deston Munden and his latest book, Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife

    Interview With an Author: Deston J. Munden

    Deston Munden is the author of several books, including Tavern, also set in Dargath. Born and raised near the Outer Banks, he can be found writing, cooking, playing World of Warcraft, and cosplaying…

  • Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! book edited by Richard Wolinsky

    Interview With an Author: Richard Wolinsky

    Richard Wolinsky co-hosted and produced Probabilities, a half-hour radio program devoted to science fiction, mystery, and mainstream fiction, from 1977 to 1995 on KPFA-FM. He took the program solo in…

  • Author Oliver Wang and his latest book, Cruising J-Town

    Interview With an Author: Oliver Wang

    Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at CSU-Long Beach and the author of Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke Univ. Press, 2015). Oliver is a…

  • Author Jim C. Hines and his latest book, Slayers of Old

    Interview With an Author: Jim C. Hines

    Jim C. Hines is the author of 20 published SF/F novels, including the Goblin Quest trilogy, the Magic ex Libris series, the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, the Janitors of the Post…

  • Author Josh Rountree and his latest book, The Unkillable Frank Lightning

    Interview With an Author: Josh Rountree

    Josh Rountree is a novelist and short story writer who writes across multiple genres, and focuses mostly on horror and dark fantasy. His novel The Legend of Charlie Fish, released by Tachyon…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • Cover image for Secret Identity

    Secret Identity

    • By: Segura, Alex
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In 1975, the comic book industry is struggling. It has survived, mostly, Frederic Wertham’s criticisms and claims regarding a causal relationship between reading comics and becoming a juvenile delinquent in Seduction of the Innocent. But there have been casualties. Readership is down. Publishers are closing. Writers and artists are left...
  • The City We Became

    The City We Became

    • By: N. K. Jemisin
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    N.K. Jemisin is a multiple award-winning, speculative fiction writer. Currently, she resides in Brooklyn, New York and, as evidenced by her novel, The City We Became, she LOVES the “Big Apple”.Every century or so, a city will “manifest”, it becomes a living thing, an entity of its own. This has...
  • Cover image for Redwood and Wildfire

    Redwood and Wildfire

    • By: Hairston, Andrea
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Redwood Phipps is an African-American girl. Aidan Wildfire Cooper is a Seminole Irish young man. The two are brought together by a hateful act of racial violence, which affects both of them for the remainder of their lives. But both are determined to keep the event from defining them. In...
  • Cover image for Real Easy

    Real Easy

    • By: Rutkoski, Marie
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    One woman murdered. Another woman missing. A police detective traumatized by her recent past. An unidentified killer. Was this their first victim or the latest in a series of murders? Will they strike again? If so, when?In Real Easy, Marie Rutkoski, who has been known until now for her outstanding...
  • Cover image for The Mary Shelley Club

    The Mary Shelley Club

    • By: Moldavsky, Goldy
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Last year, Rachel Chavez survived a home invasion. In an attempt to provide her with a new start, her mother, who teaches at Manchester Prep, an affluent Manhattan high school, moves them from their Long Island house to a Brooklyn apartment and enrolls Rachel at Manchester Prep.Since the attack, Rachel...
  • Cover image for Under the Whispering Door

    Under the Whispering Door

    Wallace Price is a successful, driven attorney, and a founding partner of a powerful law firm. He is a person of privilege with everything he wants or needs, and then suddenly, he isn’t. Wallace dies unexpectedly. He was not particularly old and was in fairly good health, although his heart...
  • Cover image for A Quilt for David

    A Quilt for David

    • By: Reigns, Steven
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    On September 3, 1990, Dr. David Acer, a dentist who worked in Jensen Beach, Florida, died from complications from AIDS. Four days after his death, Kimberly Bergalis, a young woman who was also HIV+, accused Dr. Acer of infecting her with the AIDS virus during a recent visit to his...
  • Cover image for Out of body

    Out of Body

    • By: Ford, Jeffrey, 1955-
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A small-town librarian, a senseless killing and a centuries-old horror have been preying on a community for over a hundred years. These are the building blocks used by Jeffrey Ford as a foundation for his chilling horror novella Out of Body.On his way to work as the librarian at his...