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 Radicalized

    Radicalized

    • By: Doctorow, Cory
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Speculative Fiction has a long history of using the tropes of the genre to comment on our world. Ursula K. Le Guin used The Left Hand of Darkness to examine cultural gender constructs. Using the original Star Trek television series, show creator Gene Roddenberry commented on issues like race relations...
  • Cover image for Snow White Learns Witchcraft: Stories and Poems

    Snow White Learns Witchcraft: Stories and Poems

    • By: Goss, Theodora
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    "Fairy tales are another kind of Bible, for those who know how to read them.” 'Red as Blood and White as Bone' in Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora GossTheodora Goss is an award winning-author, a professor of literature and writing at both Boston University and the Stonecoast MFA program. Her debut...
  • Cover image for The Sentence is Death

    The Sentence is Death

    • By: Horowitz, Anthony
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    In 2018, readers discovered the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s new mystery series: The Word is Murder. In it, a wealthy woman enters a London funeral parlor in the morning to make her final arrangements. She is found in her home, murdered, six hours later. When disgraced Detective Inspector Daniel...
  • Cover image for The Night Tiger

    The Night Tiger

    • By: Choo, Yangsze
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Ji Lin is a young woman who is working as an apprentice dressmaker by day and secretly working as a “dance instructor” at a dance-hall in the evenings to repay a family debt. Ren is eleven, but tells everyone that he is thirteen. He has lost his entire family, including...
  • Cover image for Holy Lands: A Novel

    Holy Lands: A Novel

    • By: Sthers, Amanda, 1978- author, translator.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Harry Rosenmerck, a successful Jewish Cardiologist, just walked away. He walked away from his family, his career, his life, and everything he knew and loved to start a pig farm in Israel. This sounds like the set-up for a potentially insensitive joke, but it isn’t. Harry is deadly serious, as...
  • Cover image for An absolutely remarkable thing : a novel

    An absolutely remarkable thing : a novel

    • By: Green, Hank,
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    We’ve all done it. We’ve all seen something extraordinary, glanced at it briefly, and then continued on toward our current destination, wherever that may be. We may be in a hurry, we may not. We may be alone, with someone else, or part of a group. But, regardless of our...
  • Cover image for Record of a Spaceborn Few.

    Record of a Spaceborn Few.

    • By: Chambers, Becky.
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Becky Chambers has become a name to watch in Science Fiction. She published her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in 2014 after completing it via a successful Kickstarter campaign, which was later picked up by Harper Voyager and released to a much wider readership and...
  • Cover image for Finding Baba Yaga : a short novel in verse

    Finding Baba Yaga : a short novel in verse

    • By: Yolen, Jane,
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Jane Yolen has been working as an author for over 50 years. She has published over 300 titles, ranging from children’s books to speculative fiction (both fantasy and science fiction), and to nonfiction. She is also a poet, an instructor of writing and a reviewer of children’s literature.Jane Yolen’s books...
  • Cover image for The Only Woman in the Room

    The Only Woman in the Room

    • By: Benedict, Marie,
    • Reviewed By: Daryl M.
    Hedy Lamarr was one of the most beautiful people to ever grace the silver screen - but that beauty was a double edged sword. While it opened doors and made her a movie star, it was often the only thing people saw. Lamarr’s beauty was so striking that people often...