Showing results by narrator "Jess Nahikian" in All Categories

Twelve-year-old Maddie Thompson and her friend Lana share a love of horror stories and wild imaginings. But Lana insists they are too old for pretending. It’s time for a different game: serving Him, a figure she sees lurking in the dark, mysterious and demanding. According to Lana, she and Maddie must obey Him or else suffer the consequences. Maddie doesn’t want to lose her most important friendship, even if it means luring an innocent girl into the woods—as a sacrifice for Him.

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.

After Emily Starr loses her dear father, the ten-year-old orphan is packed off to live with her starched relatives on Prince Edward Island. If only she could relate to them. Frankly, whip-smart, ambitious Emily can’t imagine ever feeling at home at New Moon Farm. Especially when her writerly dreams are routinely dashed by her autocratic aunt. Then Emily finds an outlet for her creative spirit with a group of friends every bit as passionate and gifted as she. With their help, New Moon could start to feel like home after all.

Ten years after Sofia was killed in a tragic accident, her college ex Caroline and her former roommate Brooke almost have what they’ve always wanted. Caroline is on the precipice of scoring funding for her feminist tech startup. Brooke is newly engaged and starting her dream job at a prestigious prep school. But unless the two best friends can cheat fate a second time, one night’s secrets could unravel everything.

King Arthur's sitting on the British throne, but not everyone's buying the whole “Once and Future King" schtick. Apparently, what he needs to shut up the doubters is the Dark Blade. You know, the one. Massive sword which is oddly stuck in a rock, guarded by a soggy woman handing out weaponry like it’s the prize in a raffle. (Seriously, who came up with this system?)

Candace Pert stood at the dawn of three revolutions: the women’s movement, integrative health, and psychopharmacology. A scientific prodigy, she was 30 years ahead of her time, preaching a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to healthcare and medicine long before yoga hit the mainstream and “wellness” took root in our vernacular. Her bestselling book Molecules of Emotion made her the mother of the Mind/Body Revolution, launching a paradigm shift in medicine. Deepak Chopra credits her with creating his career, and he said as much in his eulogy at her funeral.

The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning - but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.

Sam has retreated to her late father’s rental house, a safe place to commune with the animals in the greenbelt out back, tend to her garden, and keep her secrets. Her sense of security slowly returns - until an aggressive neighbor from the other side of the ravine fells a tree on her property. How little he regards nature. Or understands its darkness. How little he knows Sam.

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.

After being gone for two decades, Maddy’s half sister, Emily, is back in town to settle their late father’s estate. Emily’s not the troubled girl Maddy remembers from their volatile childhood. Apparently, all is well. It can’t possibly matter anymore that Maddy married Emily’s first love, but the pictures Maddy finds on her husband’s phone tell a different story. Suspicions of an affair are hard to ignore.

Working as a Wench - i.e. waitress - at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a Knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood. Company policy allows only guys to be Knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place, clobbers the Green Knight, and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. But this Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When one of the people she loves most dies and begins to appear, wan and beseeching, in the household mirrors, Faith realizes she must act quickly. Accompanied by their wisest friends, she and Jack travel far abroad, seeking the stone that will help her break the 3,000-year old curse that formed Paradoxia. There is no guarantee that they can do it but, with Faith carrying a future bearer, they know they must try.

A missing king, rumors of war coming from the North, and a Southern prince determined to preserve the peace that has lasted a generation. An agent, known only as The Traveler, is sent across time and space to protect a prince in a medieval era while keeping her true origins a secret. The prince, along with four loyal companions, journey North to find a missing king who can provide stability to a strategic realm. The Traveler must quickly earn the trust of this small group and finds herself growing attached to the one man distrusted the most.

Psychic. Mystic. Target. Arabella, the last Oracle, knows what it's like to lose. She doesn't have friends, she doesn't have family, and now those she's aligned herself with are vanishing - even the one pledged to her for all time. Someone is hunting Arabella on the busy island on which she's taken refuge. Someone with an old soul but a new grudge. When a mysterious boy shows up to lead her into a trap, Ari lets him do it. She knows the boy is a Herald - a signal of bad tidings - but she's got bigger problems - and so does he.