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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 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...