shrouded skeleton statue

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Author Ava Morgyn and her latest novel, The Bane Witch

    Interview With an Author: Ava Morgyn

    Ava Morgyn grew up falling in love with all the wrong characters in all the wrong stories, then studied English Writing & Rhetoric at St. Edward's University. She is a lover of witchcraft, tarot, and…

  • Poet Karen Rigby and latest collection of poems, Fabulosa

    Interview With a Poet: Karen Rigby

    Karen Rigby is the author of Chinoiserie, which won a 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize. A National Endowment for the Arts literature fellow, her poems have been published in journals such as The London…

  • Author Aimee Pokwatka and his first novel, Knife Skills For Beginners

    Interview With an Author: Orlando Murrin

    After being hurled into the culinary limelight on BBC's Masterchef show, Orlando Murrin became editor of BBC Good Food magazine before setting up a gastronomic guesthouse in the southwest of France…

  • 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…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • Cover image for Made things

    Made things

    • By: Tchaikovsky, Adrian, 1972-
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Coppelia is not quite a thief and not quite a con-artist. What she is, or could be if she were living a different life, is an artist. A builder who could create function and beauty from raw materials, but only in a different life. A life where her parents hadn’t...
  • Cover image for Steel Crow Saga

    Steel Crow Saga

    • By: Krueger, Paul
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A prince, a soldier, a detective, and a thief. Four very different people, with very different histories and experiences. There are two things that they all share: they have survived the war that just ended, and during that war they have all suffered significant losses. Over the course of a...
  • Cover image for The Secret Life of Sam Holloway

    The Secret Life of Sam Holloway

    • By: Thomas, Rhys
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Sam Holloway is a good guy, who is kind and thoughtful, with a stable, but not terribly exciting, job with an electronic parts distributor. He meets up with a couple of friends several nights a week at a local pub, where they talk about comics, movies, videogames and what it...
  • Cover image for The Monster of Elendhaven

    The Monster of Elendhaven

    • By: Giesbrecht, Jennifer
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A young man washes up in a harbor with no knowledge of who he is or where he came from. He doesn’t even have a name. He is tall, with dark hair and pale skin. He also possesses a strong sense of survival, driving him to do whatever is necessary...
  • Cover image for The Ruby Slippers of Oz: Thirty Years Later

    The Ruby Slippers of Oz: Thirty Years Later

    • By: Thomas, Rhys
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    “Keep tight inside of them. Their magic must be very powerful, or she wouldn't want them so badly," said Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, talking about the ruby slippers.In L. Frank Baum’s children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the magic shoes worn by the Wicked Witch of the East...
  • Cover image for The Survival of Margaret Thomas

    The Survival of Margaret Thomas

    • By: Howison, Del
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    The Western has been an established genre of fiction for well over a hundred years. In the early to mid20th century, Western fiction grew in popularity, largely driven by similarly themed motion pictures and television programs. In the 1970s, however, the genre began to fall out of favor with the...
  • Cover image for Red, White & Royal Blue

    Red, White & Royal Blue

    • By: McQuiston, Casey
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Alex Claremont-Diaz is the 21-year-old First Son Of The United States (FSOTUS). He has lived in the White House with his older sister, June (FDOTUS) for the last three years, during his mother’s first term in office. He is a media darling, being continually followed, photographed and dissected by the...
  • Cover image for The Reign of the Kingfisher: A Novel

    The Reign of the Kingfisher: A Novel

    • By: Martinson, T. J.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    The first appearance of Batman was in Detective Comics in the Spring of 1939, making 2019 the character’s 80th anniversary. Batman is a sharp contrast to most “superheroes” in that he possesses no “super” powers. His prowess, whether physical or intellectual, comes from rigorous training and study. He patrols the...
  • Cover image for Magic for Liars: A Novel

    Magic for Liars: A Novel

    • By: Gailey, Sarah
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    When Sylvia Capley, the Health instructor at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages, is found in the school library bisected from head to toe, cleanly down the middle, the National Mage Investigative Service (NMIS) concludes that her death was an accident, a spell gone wrong. The Headmaster of the school doesn’t...
  • Cover image for The Lost History of Dreams: A Novel

    The Lost History of Dreams: A Novel

    • By: Waldherr, Kris
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    When famous, and some would claim infamous, poet Hugh de Bonne dies unexpectedly, his last remaining family relations are called upon to enact his final request. De Bonne wishes to be buried on the moors near Shropshire, in a chapel of stained glass he had built 16 years earlier as...