Robot

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Authors Nathan Marsak and Arnold Hylen and book, Los Angeles Before the Freeways

    Interview With an Author: Nathan Marsak

    Arnold Hylen (1908–1987) trained at the Chouinard Art Institute, and found work as a photographer for the Fluor Corporation, where he worked from the early 1940s into the 1970s. During that period, he…

  • Author T.J. Klune and his latest novel, The Bones Beneath My Skin

    Interview With an Author: T.J. Klune

    T.J. Klune is the #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, the Green…

  • Author Margarita Montimore and her latest novel, The Dollhouse Academy

    Interview With an Author: Margarita Montimore

    Margarita Montimore is the author of Acts of Violet, Asleep From Day, and Oona Out of Order, which was a USA Today bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club pick. After receiving a BFA in creative…

  • Author Kemper Donovan and his two novels, The Busy Body and Loose Lips

    Interview With an Author: Kemper Donovan

    Kemper Donovan is the host of the All About Agatha podcast. A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, he worked at the literary management company Circle of Confusion for a decade…

  • Author Chris Nichols and his latest book, Bowlarama!: The Architecture of Mid-Century Bowling

    Interview With an Author: Chris Nichols

    Chris Nichols is a longtime preservationist and senior editor at Los Angeles magazine. For many years, he worked with the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee, serving a term as chairman of the…

  • Author Rebecca Serle and her latest novel, Good Dirt

    Interview With an Author: Charmaine Wilkerson

    Charmaine Wilkerson is the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, which was named a Read With Jenna Book Club Pick and adapted as a Hulu streaming series by Oprah Winfrey and Kapital…

  • Author Mallory O’Meara and her latest book, Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman

    Interview With an Author: Mallory O’Meara

    Mallory O’Meara is the bestselling author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, which won the 2019 SCIBA award for Biography and the 2019 Rondo award for Book of the Year, Girly Drinks, which won a 2022…

  • But Not Too Bold, a novella by Hache Pueyo

    Interview With an Author: Hache Pueyo

    Hache Pueyo is an Argentine-Brazilian writer and translator. She won an Otherwise Fellowship for her work with gender in speculative fiction, and her work has appeared as H. Pueyo in The Magazine of…

  • Author Edward Underhill and his latest book, The In-Between Bookstore

    Interview With an Author: Edward Underhill

    Edward Underhill grew up in the suburbs of Wisconsin, where he could not walk to anything, so he had to make up his own adventures. He studied music in college, spent several years living in very…

  • Author Jess Armstrong and her latest novel, The Secret of the Three Fates

    Interview With an Author: Jess Armstrong

    Jess Armstrong is the USA Today best selling author of the Ruby Vaughn Mysteries. Her debut novel, The Curse of Penryth Hall, won the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • 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...
  • 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...