Robot

Daryl M.

Librarian


Posts by Daryl M.

  • Author Juli Min and her first novel, Shanghailanders

    Interview With an Author: Juli Min

    Juli Min is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. She studied Russian and comparative literature at Harvard University, and she holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson. She was the founding editor…

  • Author Sara Nisha Adams and her latest novel, The Twilight Garden

    Interview With an Author: Sara Nisha Adams

    Sara Nisha Adams is a writer and editor. She lives in London and was born in Hertfordshire to Indian-Kenyan and English parents. Her first novel was The Reading List. Her latest novel is The Twilight…

  • Author Douglas Westerbeke and his latest book, A Short Walk Through a Wide World

    Interview With an Author: Douglas Westerbek

    Douglas Westerbeke is a librarian who lives in Ohio and works at one of the largest libraries in the US. He has spent the last decade on the local panel of the International Dublin Literary Award…

  • Author Christina Estes and her debut novel, Off the Air

    Interview With an Author: Christina Estes

    Christina Estes is an award-winning reporter who has spent more than 20 years covering crime, public policy, and business in Phoenix, Arizona. Her reporting has been heard on National Public Radio…

  • Author Jacqueline Holland and her latest novel, The Mystery Writer

    Interview With an Author: Sulari Gentill

    After setting out to study astrophysics, graduating in law and then abandoning her legal career to write books, Sulari Gentill now grows French black truffles on her farm in the foothills of the Snowy…

  • Author Justinian Huang and his debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace

    Interview With an Author: Justinian Huang

    Born to immigrants in Monterey Park, California, Justinian Huang studied English at Pomona College and screenwriting at the University of Oxford. He is now based in Los Angeles with Swagger, a…

  • Author Sophie Wan and her debut novel, Women of Good Fortune

    Interview With an Author: Sophie Wan

    Sophie Wan is a Bay Area native who is now battling the winters in Philadelphia. She graduated from UC Berkeley and spends far too much time drafting emails and drinking tea. Women of Good Fortune is…

  • Author Shubnum Khan and her debut novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

    Interview With an Author: Shubnum Khan

    Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times; McSweeney’s Quarterly; HuffPost; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Sunday Times (London); Marie Claire; and…

  • Author Izzy Wasserstein and her debut novel, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart

    Interview With an Author: Izzy Wasserstein

    Izzy Wasserstein is a queer, trans woman who teaches writing and literature. She was born and raised in Kansas and received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico. She is the…


Reviews by Daryl M.

  • 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...
  • Cover image for Never Been Kissed

    Never Been Kissed

    • By: Janovsky, Timothy
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    As Wren Roland celebrates his 22nd birthday with his best friends and roommates, Mateo and Avery, he begins to lament the fact that he has never been kissed. He’s been close, but has yet to experience what his degree in film studies has convinced him will be a life-altering and...