shrouded skeleton statue

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Author Arwen Elys Dayton and her latest book Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

    Interview With an Author: Arwen Elys Dayton

    Arwen Elys Dayton is the best-selling author of the Egyptian sci-fi thriller Resurrection and the near-future Seeker Series, set in Scotland and Hong Kong. She spends months doing research for her…

  • Author Stuart Turton and his debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

    Interview With an Author: Stuart Turton

    Stuart Turton is a freelance journalist who lives in West London with his wife and daughter. Stuart is not to be trusted—in the nicest possible way.The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is his debut…

  • Collage of Shaun Barger and his first novel, Mage Against the Machine

    Interview With an Author: Shaun Barger

    Shaun Barger is a Los Angeles-based novelist who detests cold weather, idiot plotting, and fascism. He splits his days between writing, resisting the siren’s call of Hollywood’s eternally mild summer…

  • Robert Masello and his current novel The Night Crossing

    Interview With an Author: Robert Masello

    Robert Masello is an award-winning journalist, television writer, and bestselling author. His guide to composition, Robert’s Rules of Writing, has been adopted for many college classrooms, and he has…

  • Author V.E. Schwab and her latest book, Vengeful

    Interview With an Author: V.E. Schwab

    Victoria "V.E." Schwab V.E. Schwab has been called “the heir to Diana Wynne Jones.” She is the author of the New York Times bestselling Shades of Magic series, as well as a number of middle grade and…

  • Author Rebecca Serle and her book, The Dinner List

    Interview With an Author: Rebecca Serle

    Rebecca Serle is a full-time writer, which means she gets to wear pajamas to work. She went to the University of Southern California, then got her MFA from the New School in NYC. (She likes New York…

  • Author P. Djeli Clark and his book "The Black God's Drum"

    Interview With an Author: P. Djèlí Clark

    Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. Djèlí Clark spent the formative years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. His writing has appeared in Daily Science…

  • Author Christopher Huang and his book, A Gentleman's Murder

    Interview With an Author: Christopher Huang

    Christopher Huang grew up in Singapore, where he served his two years of National Service as an Army Signaller. He then moved to Canada where he studied Architecture at McGill University in Montréal…

  • Photo of Juliet McDaniel and her debut novel, Mr. & Mrs. American Pie

    Interview With an Author: Juliet McDaniel

    Juliet McDaniel has an M.A. in Writing from DePaul University. Although raised in Arizona, she spent the last 25 years living in Chicago, where she currently resides with her partner and her cats. She…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • 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...
  • Cover image for Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan

    Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan

    • By: Michalski, Liz
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    We all know the story of Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up. J.M. Barrie wrote and published a play and two books about Peter and his adventures in the early 20th century, recounting how Peter visited the Darling children: Wendy, John, and Michael, and spirited them away...
  • Cover image for Acts of Violet

    Acts of Violet

    • By: Montimore, Margarita
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In early 2020, Margarita Montimore published her debut novel, Oona Out of Order. It followed a woman who awakes every January 1st at a different point in her life. She lives in that year, and in that body, until December 31st, only to awaken the following morning beginning a different...
  • Cover image for Hawk Mountain

    Hawk Mountain

    • By: Habib, Conner
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In the late afternoon, Todd sits on the beach watching 6-year-old Anthony, his son, play in the surf. A man approaches Todd, and, after a minute, he recognizes him. It is Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly during their senior year in high school. In spite of their shared history, Jack...
  • Cover image for The Kaiju Preservation Society

    The Kaiju Preservation Society

    • By: Scalzi, John
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In early March of 2020, Jamie Gray is unceremoniously demoted from marketing executive to “deliverator” at füdmüd, an internet startup company in New York City. As the COVID pandemic worsens, Jamie struggles to get by until a chance delivery happens to be to Tom Stevens. Tom tells Jamie that he...
  • Cover image for A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

    A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

    • By: Chambers, Becky
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In 2021, Becky Chambers introduced readers to the moon of Panga, where, centuries ago, the civilization’s robots gained consciousness and, en masse, walked off into the surrounding wilderness and were never heard from again. Until the day a robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap walked up to Sibling Dex, a tea...
  • Cover image for Remarkably Bright Creatures

    Remarkably Bright Creatures

    • By: Van Pelt, Shelby
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    After her husband’s death, Tova Sullivan took a job cleaning the Sowell Bay Aquarium. She works evenings after the aquarium has closed to the public, mopping the floors, clearing the trash cans, and cleaning the glass walls of the exhibition tanks until they shine. As she works her way around...
  • Cover image for The Children on the Hill

    The Children on the Hill

    • By: McMahon, Jennifer
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Monster. The word brings to mind ugly, misshapen creatures wreaking havoc wherever they go. Perhaps the most famous monster is Frankenstein’s monster from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s been over 200 years since the teenaged Shelley created one of the most enduring tales of all time. And over the last two...
  • Cover image for Siren Queen

    Siren Queen

    On a whim, a young Chinese-American girl pays with an inch of her hair so that she and he sister can see Romeo and Juliet at the new nickelodeon in their neighborhood. From that moment on, she has a single desire: to be a motion picture star. Not simply an...