Showing results by narrator "Jess Nahikian" in All Categories

A life without feelings, a life without decisions; that’s the only life Evangeline knows. Because of the manufacturing of Remedy, her community of Impetus has discovered a way to survive and prevent the self-destructing mistakes of The Before by inhibiting feelings, creating a society that relies wholly on logic and entrusts Impetus to make all the decisions for its people. A chance encounter results in a friendship between Evangeline and a boy outside of Impetus named Gavin who challenges Evangeline to reassess her conviction in the world she has always known.

Fire and ashes! The city is burning! Young mage’s apprentice Thomena is gifted in the elements of wind and water, but she yearns to learn the secrets of fire. When she discovers another mage is the one starting fires around her city of Orlaun, her resolve is tested by tragedy and roaring infernos. She needs to win the trust of the toughest heroes around, the fire-fighting vigiles, but they are hard to impress. Can she save Orlaun before the fires consume all Thomena cares about?

When Faith is summoned from the baby farm in suburban London, where she's grown up, to serve as a companion to her cousin, Margaret is stunned. The family home Rockglass Manor is in Mayfair, an elegant part of London. Faith is sure her life will vastly improve. Yet, when she reaches Rockglass Manor, no one seems to be waiting for her, other than the cook and the housekeeper. Her cousin Margaret is trouble, and Faith finds herself rocketed into a situation that she doesn't understand, at all.

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.

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.

When the "bane of my existence" asks me what I’m looking for in a man and offers to help me get him, I’m pretty sure I’ve died and gone to hell. But the idea of Barclay Scott in my clutches is too delicious to resist, and just like every horror movie ever made, I get into the car with Prince Smarming and let him take me to a house party in the woods where all kinds of fun and games are to be had just off the path. Even silly kissing games like truth or dare, where the consequences of the truth are worse than any dare. Truth: I’ve realized it’s not Barclay Scott I want.

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.

As a teenager, Hannah Jacobs was excited for a sleepover with her older sister Casey, but a blizzard altered their plans. Sometime that night, an unknown killer broke into Casey’s apartment in Laramie, Wyoming, and brutally stabbed her multiple times, leaving her for dead. Ten years later, Hannah is still haunted by the murder of her sister that fateful night, and with no viable suspects or evidence, the case has long turned cold, nearly forgotten by everyone except her. Determined to uncover the truth, Hannah shutters her Private Investigation firm and travels to Laramie.

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.

Study Break, a collection of interconnected contemporary Young Adult short stories written by Gen Z authors, explores different parts of "the college experience," from questioning your major to questioning your identity.