Audiobooks narrated by Jess Nahikian

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. Will it turn out that he's the guy of her dreams, or is she the girl of his? Perfect for fans of Every Day and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this tender, insightful listen defies time, space, and expectation.

Adam Rex (Author), J. D. Jackson, Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive

From journalist and author of An Ordinary Age, an examination, dismantling, and reconstruction of ambition, where burnout is the symptom of our holiest sin: the lonely way we strive. Ambition-the want, the hunger, the need to achieve-is woven into America's fabric from the first colonization to capitalism. From our first gold star assignment to acceptance at the "right" college to hustle and grinding our lives, we celebrate our drive, even as we gatekeep who is permitted to strive--and how visibly. Even as we burn out. When we can't even. When we know: work won't love us back. All the Gold Stars looks at how the cultural, personal, and societal expectations around ambition are driving the burnout epidemic by funneling our worth into productivity, limiting our imaginations, and pushing us further apart. Through the devastating personal narrative of her own ambition crisis, Stauffer discovers the common factors driving us all, peeling back layers of family expectations, capitalism, and self-esteem that dangerously tie up our worth in our output. Interviews with students, parents, workers, psychologists, labor organizers, and more offer a new definition of ambition and the tools to reframe our lives around true success. All the Gold Stars provides ways for us to reject our current reality and reconceive ambition as more collective, imaginative, and rooted in caring for ourselves and each other.

Rainesford Stauffer (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel

An Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestseller. From New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde comes a gripping and emotional novel about friendship, motherhood, and the journey toward finding a place to call home. Brooke is a divorced single mom, financially strapped, living with her mother, and holding tight to the one thing that matters most: her two-year-old daughter, Etta. Then, in a matter of seconds, Brooke’s life is shattered when she’s carjacked. Helpless and terrified, all Brooke can do is watch as Etta, still strapped in her seat, disappears into the Los Angeles night. Miles away, Etta is found by Molly, a homeless teen who is all too used to darkness. Thrown away by her parents, and with a future as stable as the wooden crate she calls home, Molly survives day to day by her wits. As unpredictable as her life is, she’s stunned to find Etta, abandoned and alone. Shielding the little girl from more than the elements, Molly must put herself in harm’s way to protect a child as lost as she is. Out of one terrible moment, Brooke’s and Molly’s desperate paths converge and an unlikely friendship across generations and circumstances is formed. With it, Brooke and Molly will come to discover that what’s lost—and what’s found—can change in a heartbeat.

Catherine Ryan Hyde (Author), Jess Nahikian, Kate Rudd (Narrator)

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Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science

The story of maverick scientist Candace Pert, whose groundbreaking research introduced the world to the mind-body connection, opioid receptors, and peptide T, and her fight for recognition in a toxic healthcare 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. Candace began her career as an unbridled maverick. In 1972, as a 26-year-old graduate student at Johns Hopkins, she discovered the opiate receptor, revolutionizing her field and enabling pharmacologists to design new classifications of drugs from Prozac to Viagra to Percocet and OxyContin. The tragic irony of her breakthrough, touted as the first step to end heroin addiction, is that it helped spawn a virulent epidemic of drug dependence. Facing the largest public health crisis of the 21st century, Candace was incensed that the Hippocratic oath-"first, do no harm"-would succumb to greed, and as witness to this abuse of power, she was one of few scientists courageous enough to protest. Later, as Chief of Brain Biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, Candace created Peptide T, the non-toxic treatment for HIV featured in Dallas BuyersClub. As the AIDS pandemic raged, triggering panic across Reagan-era America, the U.S. government poured massive amounts of money into finding a cure, sparking a battle among scientists for funding and power. Bested by rivals with competing drugs yet desperate to help, Candace went rogue, becoming a lynchpin in the black market for Peptide T. After a scandalous departure from her tenured position at the NIH, Candace launched a series of private companies with Michael Ruff, her second husband and collaborator. Naïve to the world of business, she was manipulated by investors keen to wrest control of her discoveries. But Candace too became tainted, believing that her noble ends would justify devious means. Like a mythic hero, she succumbed to a fatal flaw, and her greatest strengths-singularity of purpose and blind faith in her own virtuosity-would prove to be her undoing.

Pamela Ryckman (Author), Jess Nahikian, Pamela Ryckman (Narrator)

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Crowned A Traitor

A Young Adult Dark Fantasy from Hell. The hunt for Klara will keep you on the edge of your seat in this fast-paced, suspenseful Epic Fantasy. Heir to Hell and the Dark Forest of Malum, Klara has been called upon to take her place as High Queen of Malum. Though Klara has no intention of ruling, her guardians want her head on a spike. Klara's only option - escape to Kalos, Fae ruled lands free from Dark Magic. To survive the perilous journey, she needs help... A Leprechaun with a talent for smuggling. A mischievous Demon with swaying loyalties The soul of a greying Warlock. Lycaon siblings with a talent for deception. Destiny has an awful habit of catching up with those who run. Editorial Reviews Klara is a multilayered protagonist. She's a total badass, she's recklessly brave and strong-willed, but also compassionate, kind and sometimes fearful. -@readinginpjamasThis book is so unique with so many unexpected actions, intrigues and events that I couldn't put it down. -@bozena_frejich_reviewsYou can picture the dark forest in your head, envision the Creatures that roam the dark shadows, feel the Hounds of Hell at your heals as your pulse races to out run them. -@permanenty bookedThe story was absolutely captivating and the descriptions were breathtaking, maybe a little disturbing haha! - @come_read_with_me

Kate Callaghan (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Funeral Girl

'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.'

Emma K. Ohland (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Gallows Hill

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. Patience has tried all her life to be a good Puritan?obedient to God and to her elders?and all her life, she has come up short. But her orderly world is upended when her younger sister, Abigail, falls victim to a mysterious affliction. The same torments have stricken other Salem girls, who claim they’re being bewitched by servants of the Devil. Soon the girls, including Abigail, begin accusing neighbors of witchcraft. As the community becomes consumed by suspicion and fear, Thomas and Patience search for the truth. To protect those they care about, they will have to question everything they think they know: their faiths, their loyalties, and their places in Salem.

Lois Ruby (Author), Jess Nahikian, Michael Crouch (Narrator)

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Mermaid Moon

An award-winning author tells of a mermaid who leaves the sea in search of her landish mother in a captivating tale spun with beautiful prose, lush descriptions, empathy, and keen wit. Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm. It is the way of the world. Come close and tell us your dreams. Sanna is a mermaid — but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever. From the author of the Michael L. Printz Honor Book The Kingdom of Little Wounds comes a gorgeously told tale of belonging, sacrifice, fear, hope, and mortality.

Susann Cokal (Author), Jess Nahikian, Stina Nielsen (Narrator)

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Remedy Files, The: Rebirth

Book #2 of The Remedy Files Trilogy In this sequel to The Remedy Files: Illusion, Evangeline finds herself a prisoner in a new community called Revival after her abduction from Rebirth. Equally cold and filled with unfeeling people who don't know life in any other way, Revival sets the direction for The New World. Evangeline's brief encounter with the very-much-alive Gavin has her questioning his integrity and true role in their history together. In Revival, Evangeline learns The New World has determined that people with natural intuition and precognition are of special use to them, the exact abilities identified in Evangeline, Gavin, and most of those in Rebirth who can warn when bad events are about to occur. But after discovering Gavin’s traitorous acts, new alliances must be formed, and Evangeline has a different mission in mind. People deserve to have choices and to feel, and Evangeline won't stop fighting until Revival reinstates basic human rights. It starts with getting everyone in Rebirth on board. Then saving Impetus and the other communities once and for all, regardless of Revival’s—and Gavin’s—attempts to stop her.

Lauren Eckhardt (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Ride: Competing for the Cup

Covington, an elite equestrian boarding school in England, didn't exactly seem like a natural fit for Kit Bridges, an American teenager who's afraid of horses. But between TK, the unruly horse with whom she formed an immediate, indescribable bond; her trustworthy roommate, Anya; cute boys Will and Nav; and an array of entertaining classmates, Kit soon found her squad - and a new home away from home. It doesn't hurt that her beloved dad, Rudy, is also at the school, as the equestrian instructor. Since her mom passed away, they're even closer than before. Now, with the big-deal House Cup competition right around the corner, Kit is eager to prove just how far she and TK have come. But distractions from the work of riding abound. Why is Anya acting so weird? Who's leaving Kit the adorable, encouraging sticky notes with tips for riding TK? Will Kit's frenemy, Elaine, ever ease up on her? To top it all off, when Kit catches her dad and another teacher having dinner together, she starts to fear that she's not the only one who's ready to get back in the saddle. Just when it seems like her newfound Covington family might be solidified for good, Kit may find herself rocked to the core - again.

Bobbi Jg Weiss (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Ride: Kit Meets Covington

Afraid of riding after a bad fall, plucky fourteen-year-old Kit Bridges doesn't know what to expect when her cowboy father takes a position at a prestigious boarding school, The Covington Academy. A fancy equestrian school in England where she and her dad can make a new start after a tough year sounds promising. Things are looking up when Kit meets Anya, her cool (and possibly secretly royal) roommate, and the boys of Covington, like Will, with their charming accents. But she hadn't anticipated such a strict headmistress, Lady Covington. Or the expectation that every student be a rider. Or the wild horse TK, with whom she seems to have a special bond. Navigating new friendships, romances, and an austere environment, Kit needs to figure out whether she's ready to get back on the horse. And at the end of the day, it's hard to tell who'll be more changed by her arrival at her new school - Covington or Kit herself?

Bobbi Jg Weiss (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Ride: The Search for TK

Kit’s attempts to fit in at Covington go off course when her horse, TK, is sold. Can she find him and bring him home, or will she have to get back in the saddle — on a new horse? Life’s been difficult enough since American teen Kit Bridges moved to England with her dad to start their new life at The Covington Academy, an elite equestrian boarding school. Her roommate, Anya, turned out to be an Indian princess — a secret Anya didn’t bother to confide to Kit before fleeing Covington, seemingly for good. The boys in England are charming, but they’re too busy fighting for Kit’s attention, and she’s focused on the only one who really made Kit feel like she belonged: wild, unruly horse TK. But TK behaved so badly at the House Cup that the headmistress, Lady Covington, sold him and sent him away from the school. If Kit could only find the bill of sale, maybe she could find out where TK is, bring him back, and convince everyone to give him a second chance. Then again, second chances aren’t exactly Covington’s specialty.

Bobbi Jg Weiss (Author), Jess Nahikian (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Jess Nahikian