Showing results by narrator "Jess Nahikian" in All Categories

As a member of the Charmers Council, Gaige is able to form lasting bonds with the magical beasts of his world. At least, he used to be a Charmer...until he died and was brought back as one of the immortal assassins of Cruor. Now he's far more dangerous...and something beyond the shadows lies in wait, hungry to claim him for its own.

Ellory returns to Pine Brook to navigate senior year after a two-month suspension and summer away - no boyfriend, no friends. No going back. Tormented by some and sought out by others, troubled by a mysterious note-writer who won’t let Ellory forget, and consumed by guilt over her not entirely innocent role in everything and everyone she’s lost, Ellory finds that even in the present, the past is everywhere. The path forward isn’t a straight line. And moving on will mean sorting the truth from the lies - the lies Ellory has been telling herself.

In her first book of comic strips, Emma reflects on social and feminist issues by means of simple line drawings, dissecting the mental load, ie all that invisible and unpaid organizing, list-making and planning women do to manage their lives, and the lives of their family members. Most of us carry some form of mental load - about our work, household responsibilities, financial obligations and personal life; but what makes up that burden and how it's distributed within households and understood in offices is not always equal or fair.

It’s 1987, and sixteen-year-old Gracie Byrne wishes her life were totally different. Shy and awkward, she has trouble fitting in at her new school, she’s still reeling from her parents’ divorce, and her grandmother Katherine’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. So when Gracie finds a blank journal in Katherine’s vanity drawer, she begins writing stories about herself—a more popular version of herself, that is. But then the hot guy in her art class describes a dream he had about her—the exact scene she wrote about him in her journal—and Gracie realizes that she can create any reality she wants.

Zelda is stuck in a dream, a very strange dream where people can fly, bears sneeze money, and her childhood cat, Patches, is somehow alive—despite being run over years ago. Things only get stranger when Zelda meets Langston, a sweet if overly timid guy who feels more real to her than anyone she’s ever met. As Zelda and Langston explore the far reaches of the dreamscape together, they find themselves growing closer and closer. But what they uncover along the way pushes them towards a truth neither of them wants to face.

Seventeen-year-old Helena “Nell” Cusack came to New York this summer looking for a story—a real story. She dreams of one day writing hard-hitting articles for the New York Chronicle, but so far she's only managed to land a job as a lowly society reporter. That is, until Alice Austen strolls into her life, an audacious street photographer who encourages Nell to shake up polite society…and maybe also take a chance on love.

Aidan Thomas is a hardworking family man and a respected member of his community. He's also a kidnapper and serial killer who has murdered eight women. And there's a ninth, a woman he's renamed Rachel, imprisoned in a backyard shed where she fears for her life. When Aidan's wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Cecilia, are forced to move. Aidan brings Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a family friend who needs a place to stay. After five years of captivity, surely Rachel is too brainwashed to attempt to escape.

The Late Bloomer is harrowing, grim, and poignant in the way of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Told in Kevin March’s singular and unforgettable voice, delivering a gripping narrative with an unsparing climax as moving as it is terrifying, The Late Bloomer defies expectations of the genre and will haunt those who listen to it.

When American teen Kit Bridges moves to England to attend an elite equestrian boarding school, neither she nor her new home will ever be quite the same.

This amazingly wise and nimble collection investigates the horrors inflicted on so-called “witches” of the past. The Witch of Eye unearths salves, potions, and spells meant to heal, yet interpreted by inquisitors as evidence of evil. The author describes torture and forced confessions alongside accounts of gentleness of legendary midwives.

Valerie was born with one foot on the accelerator. Raised in a family of renowned swordsmen, her need for speed sets her apart. But when a tragic murder casts her out of the noble society she’s relied on to protect her, she has to master the way of the sword to fight her way back. The king is searching for the next knight to sit at the Round Table, but Valerie only wants justice. To get it, she’ll enter his tournament and face road warriors from all over the kingdom. Her only hope for survival is a brooding swordsman mentor, a blade with no name, and one legendary car.

Valerie is on a mission to reach the king. But when a gang of lawless Avalonian natives hijacks her prized war car, getting it back means a detour into dangerous territory. The frontier is overrun with cutthroat gangs, deadly bounty hunters, and mountain lords with their own brand of justice. When her mission thrusts her between warring factions, she’s forced to take sides in a battle she’s unprepared to fight. Secrets from her own past lie hidden in the forest, and with her mentor Damon missing, the only thing she can count on is her sword.

After school one day, Frankie, a lover of physics and astronomy, has her first sexual experience with quiet and gorgeous Benjamin - and gets her period. It’s only blood, they agree. But soon a gruesome meme goes viral, turning an intimate, affectionate afternoon into something sordid, mortifying, and damaging. In the time it takes to swipe a screen, Frankie’s universe implodes. Who can she trust? Not Harriet, her suddenly cruel best friend, and certainly not Benjamin, the only one who knows about the incident.

Dr. Hannah Bryers, anthropology professor and forensics expert at the prestigious Mad River University, takes pleasure in examining corpses, but small talk and living people fill her with dread. When she’s not teaching, she analyzes the decomposing flesh of murder victims around the globe.

With one touch of any body that passes through Richter Funeral Home, Georgia Richter can awaken the spirit of the departed. With one more touch, she makes the spirit disappear to a fate that remains mysterious to her. To cope with her deep anxiety about death, she does her best to fulfill the final wishes of the deceased whose ghosts she briefly revives. Then her classmate Milo's body arrives at Richter—and his spirit wants help with unfinished business, forcing her to reckon with her relationship to grief and mortality.

In the touristy city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, a woman named Lyra lives a rather modest life with the incurable mental disorder, schizophrenia. Clever, curious, and determined, she is constantly challenged by her desire to find some semblance of “normalcy”—whatever that means—alongside her depression, anxiety, critical self-talk, and frequent auditory hallucinations. Lyra is a work of literary fiction that represents a fraction of the challenges of living in an area where mental health is downplayed or misunderstood, and mental health services are underfunded.

In a series of interwoven fictionalized stories, Deborah Noyes gives voice to the marginalized women in P. T. Barnum’s family - and the talented entertainers he built his entertainment empire on. Barnum was a legendary showman, entrepreneur, marketing genius, and one of the most famous nineteenth-century personalities. For those who lived in Barnum’s shadow, however, life was complex.

Summer 1940. Fourteen-year-old Tessa Graham finds herself in a new, unfamiliar world. For her safety, she is sent from England to Chicago to live with the prominent Ardley family just before the London Blitz. On the University of Chicago campus, 18-year-old Anthony Ardley has to make a choice. His country stands at the brink of war. What will happen when Tessa and Anthony cross paths on the way to discovering themselves? A coming of age tale that emerges into an epic love story, this book takes you back to Chicago in the pre-war era, when two young people must find their paths.

Dasia Harris lives an ordinary life in London. Well, ordinary for a woman determined to blend in at all costs. Once a gifted computer engineer, now Dasia eschews social media and takes one temporary, dead-end job after another. Because her mother was right: she's not to be trusted. When Dasia does what comes naturally to her, people get hurt.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. Thomas is marked as an outcast the moment he steps off the ship from England. As a Quaker, he’s outnumbered and distrusted by Salem’s Puritans. And as an orphan without any useful skills, he has nowhere to live and no way to earn his keep. In a stroke of luck—perhaps good, perhaps not—he’s taken in by the aged widow Prudence Blevins, who’s rumored to be a witch.