shrouded skeleton statue

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Author Sunyi-Dean and her latest book, The Girl With A Thousand Faces

    Interview With an Author: Sunyi Dean

    Sunyi Dean (she/her) is a biracial fantasy author who was born in Texas, grew up in Hong Kong, and now resides in North England. She writes speculative fiction with a weird slant. Her new novel is The…

  • Author Lee Goldberg and his latest book, Murder by Design

    Interview With an Author: Lee Goldberg

    Lee Goldberg is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than seventy novels. His latest novel is Murder by Design, and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.

  • Author Meg Elison and her book, Foundling Fathers

    Interview With an Author: Meg Elison

    Bestselling writer Meg Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She was a Clayton B. Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University, as well as a…

  • Author Rasheed Newson and his book, There's Only One Sin in Hollywood

    Interview With an Author: Rasheed Newson

    Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of…

  • priya parmer and her book the original

    Interview With an Author: Priya Parmar

    Priya Parmar is the author of the novels Exit the Actress and Vanessa and Her Sister. Her latest novel is The Original, and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.

  • Vincent Yu and his book Seek Immediate Shelter

    Interview With an Author: Vincent Yu

    Vincent Yu is a sales manager at W.W. Norton/Liveright and the winner of the 2021 Ashley Bourne Prize for fiction from Ploughshares. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly…

  • Author Leah Weiss and her latest novel, The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow

    Interview With an Author: Leah Weiss

    Leah Weiss is an acclaimed southern writer living in Virginia. Her debut novel If the Creek Don't Rise was released in 2017 and selected as Library Reads, Indie Next, and SIBA Okra Pick. It was…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • Cover image for Never Been Kissed

    Never Been Kissed

    • By: Janovsky, Timothy
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    As Wren Roland celebrates his 22nd birthday with his best friends and roommates, Mateo and Avery, he begins to lament the fact that he has never been kissed. He’s been close, but has yet to experience what his degree in film studies has convinced him will be a life-altering and...
  • Cover image for Only a Monster

    Only a Monster

    • By: Len, Vanessa
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Joan believes herself to be a typical teenager. She spends her summers in London visiting her maternal grandmother, while her father visits his family in Malaysia. During this visit, she has been volunteering at Holland House, a historic home and museum in Kensington. Holland House is where she met Nick...
  • Cover image for The Book Woman's Daughter

    The Book Woman's Daughter

    • By: Richardson, Kim Michele
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In 2019, Kim Michele Richardson told the story of Cussy Mary Carter and her work as a Pack Horse Librarian in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Now, in 2022,  Richardson returns to tell the next chapter in Cussy Mary’s story, which actually belongs to her daughter, in The Book...
  • Cover image for One last stop

    One last stop

    • By: McQuiston, Casey
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A young woman on her way to her first day of classes at Brooklyn College spills coffee on herself just prior to boarding the subway. Another young woman on the train comes to her rescue with a scarf and a kind word. The next time the student boards the train...
  • Cover image for The Quarter Storm

    The Quarter Storm

    • By: Henry, Veronica G.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Vodou priestess Mambo Reina Dumond learned the practices and customs of Vodou as a child from her father, while her family was living in Haiti. She is inhabited by the spirit of Erzulie, which makes her a gifted practitioner of water magic. Reina operates a small business behind her home...
  • Cover image for One-Shot Harry

    One-Shot Harry

    • By: Phillips, Gary
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    The year is 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. is about to hold his Freedom Rally at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles; William H. Parker is Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department; John F. Kennedy is President of the United States; Pat Brown is the Governor of California; Gas is...
  • Cover image for The Fervor: A Novel

    The Fervor: A Novel

    Meiko is the Japanese wife of Jamie Briggs, a white US Air Force pilot fighting in World War II. Meiko, and her daughter Aiko, are “residents” of the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. A few days ago, an unscheduled truck came to the camp. The residents are told to stay...
  • Cover image for Mickey7

    Mickey7

    • By: Ashton, Edward
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Mickey Barnes NEEDS to get off Midgard, the colony planet on which he has lived his entire life. Because staying on Midgard is not an option, he takes the only avenue open to him: he volunteers to be the “expendable” on Midgard’s first outgoing colony ship, the Drakkar. An “expendable”...
  • 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...