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 Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

    Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

    • By: Willberg, T. A.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Imagine the following:  A chilling murder, a secret detective agency with offices located in a myriad of tunnels located beneath London, and a young apprentice determined to find the killer in order to clear one of her closest friends of the murder. In her debut novel, which is the beginning...
  • Cover image for The Narrowboat Summer

    The Narrowboat Summer

    • By: Youngson, Anne
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Eve has spent the last 30 years working for an engineering/manufacturing company managing various projects and climbing the corporate ladder. Suddenly, she has been “released” from her position. She is a corporate scapegoat for systemic problems within her company and, as the only woman at her management level, the seemingly...
  • Cover image for Good Neighbors: A Novel

    Good Neighbors: A Novel

    • By: Langan, Sarah
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    The first season of The Twilight Zone in 1960 included an episode written by show creator Rod Serling entitled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Serling presented a block of homes, filled with “typical” American families, on a summer evening. There is a bright flash of light, whose origin...
  • Cover image for N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law

    N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law

    • By: Armour, Jody David
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Jody Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He studies issues of race and legal decision-making as well as torts and tort reform movements. He also studies and teaches on the intersections of language, the law and ethics. His latest book directly...
  • Cover image for The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

    The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

    The year is 1704 and Lady Cecily Kay has returned to London from her husband’s posting as a consul in Smyrna. Upon learning of her imminent return to the British Isles, Cecily sent a letter to Sir Barnaby Mayne, a renowned collector in London with one of the most expansive...
  • Cover image for Hella

    Hella

    • By: Gerrold, David, 1944-
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    David Gerrold is speculative fiction royalty. His career spans six decades, over which he has won the Hugo and the Nebula awards. He has written more than 50 novels, worked on numerous television series and created cultural touchstones like tribbles (from Star Trek) and the Sleestak (from The Land of...
  • Cover image for The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

    The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

    • By: Zapata, Michael
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A pirate, a refugee, two pre-teen boys in love with speculative fiction stories, and two adult men who are friends and are each searching for what seems to be missing in their lives. Over the course of nearly a century, these disparate individuals will orbit the missing manuscript of a...
  • Cover image for The Devil and the Dark Water

    The Devil and the Dark Water

    • By: Turton, Stuart
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In a "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery, a crime, or series of crimes, is committed under circumstances that appear, at least initially, impossible for said crime to have been enacted. Those same conditions will also seem to preclude the criminal entering or exiting the crime scene.The first “locked-room” mystery was...
  • Cover image for The Eighth Detective

    The Eighth Detective

    • By: Pavesi, Alex
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In the early 1940s, a Scottish professor of mathematics devises a mathematical definition of the murder mystery story and writes seven provocative stories as proof of his theory. He publishes a journal article regarding his ideas and then self-publishes his seven stories in a small volume, entitled The White Murders.Decades...