shrouded skeleton statue

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • 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…

  • Chunck Tingle and his book cover Bury Your Gays

    Interview With an Author: Chuck Tingle

    Chuck Tingle is the USA Today bestselling author of Camp Damascus and Straight. He is a mysterious force of energy behind sunglasses and a pink mask. He is also an anonymous author of romance, horror…

  • Author Delilah S. Dawson and her first novel, The Resurrectionist

    Interview With an Author: A. Rae Dunlap

    A. (Amanda) Rae Dunlap studied film and Victorian literature at Northwestern University and spends her days as a trailer editor at Disney, bringing to life the magic of the world’s most influential…

  • Book covers of favorite books

    My Favorite Books of 2024

    Season’s Readings, everyone! As is generally true, there have been some marvelous books published in 2024, and I’m thrilled to share my favorites with you. I’ve listed these books in alphabetical…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • Cover image for The Motion Picture Teller

    The Motion Picture Teller

    • By: Cotterill, Colin
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Supot Yongjaiyut knows he is not living his best life. The year is 1996 and Supot lives in Bangkok. During the day, he works for the Royal Thai Mail Service, a job he loathes and for which he knows he has no aptitude. When he’s not at work, he spends...
  • Cover image for Weyward: A Novel

    Weyward: A Novel

    • By: Hart, Emilia
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    “The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”  From: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence by Adrienne RichAltha is a 21-year-old woman who, in 1619, is accused of, and tried for, witchcraft in her small English village. She is a...
  • Cover image for Stone Blind

    Stone Blind

    • By: Haynes, Natalie
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    "I only see them for an instant. Then they're gone. But it's enough. Enough to know that the hero isn't the one who's kind or brave or loyal. Sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- he is monstrous. And the monster? Who is she? She is what happens when someone...
  • Cover image for The Getaway

    The Getaway

    • By: Giles, Lamar
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Karloff Country is a marvel. Modeled on Walt Disney World in Florida, Karloff Country is a slightly smaller theme park/resort complex with a similar number of theme parks as Walt Disney World, but also includes: planned communities for all of its employees, a power plant, vertical farms to provide the...
  • Cover image for Paperback Jack

    Paperback Jack

    • By: Estleman, Loren D.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    The year is 1946. WWII has ended and Jacob Heppleman is one of the many veterans returning home from the European conflict. For Jacob, home is New York City. Before the war, he wrote detective, western, and war stories for the pulp magazines. He even published a novel that was...
  • Cover image for Neom

    Neom

    • By: Tidhar, Lavie
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    A sprawling metropolis on the edge of the Red Sea that is simultaneously a playground of the wealthy and a struggle for the poor. A woman working multiple jobs to survive because she isn’t rich in a place that isn’t kind to someone without money. A young boy, alone in...
  • Cover image for Gallant

    Gallant

    • By: Schwab, Victoria
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Olivia Prior has lived at Merilance since she was two years old. While Merilance calls itself a school, the truth is that it is closer to an asylum, a prison. It is a place where girls and young women who are not wanted are sent when they have nowhere else...
  • Cover image for Wrong Place, Wrong Time

    Wrong Place, Wrong Time

    • By: McAllister, Gillian
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    It is a given that, in most mystery novels, someone dies. The death occurs either before, or shortly after, the novel begins. The bulk of the narrative will explore how or why someone died. In her new novel, Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Gillian McAllister finds a new way to approach...
  • Cover image for The Picture Bride

    The Picture Bride

    The year is 1917 and a seventeen-year-old girl named Willow, who lives with her widowed mother and two younger brothers in a small, rural village in southeastern Korea, is asked by a traveling matchmaker if she wants to get married. The older woman shows Willow a photo of a young...