Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 388 short novels in Face-Slapping
I opened my eyes to a face that wasn't mine and a woman looking down at me like I had no right to breathe. "Who are you?" I croaked. My throat felt alien. "Don't play dumb," the woman snapped, her voice cold as winter glass. "You think you can steal my resources with your family behind you? Get out of my way." She left without looking back. Her heels clicked like a verdict on the floor. I blinked and found myself in a hospital room that smelled of disinfectant and stale tea. Neon...
"Stop talking." I slammed my teacup down so hard the rim clicked and the servants jumped. "You're—" Nolan Reyes froze, his voice brittle. "Am I what?" I leaned forward. "A mistake? A stain? A toy? Say it again." "You—" Nolan's wife, Annabelle Vargas, stepped between him and me. "Giselle, you are our guest. This is uncivil." "This is my sister's honor," I said. "You made it a public joke. I will not be civil." They had called my sister Isla McCormick a "hen that won't lay" in...
I never wanted the easy title my father offered me. "Take the job; it's yours," he said once, like it was a kindness. I replied, "No. I want to go in by my own name." "Freya," he smiled, "then go and earn it." I did. I told myself I would survive as an ordinary intern. I would not use my family name. I walked into the company's glass doors with no fanfare, a student ID hidden in my wallet, and a head full of numbers and quiet determination. "You're in finance," Chiara said on my first...
“I won’t marry a blind man!” I screamed, and my voice bounced off the mansion walls. “Quiet down, Ivory,” my mother said smoothly, like she always did. “You’ll thank us later.” “I’ll never be a show for people to laugh at,” I said. “You’re being dramatic,” Lenora said from the couch, hands folded like a queen. “Stop embarrassing the family.” I let them fight. I let them plan. I let them shove me into a red veil and into a car that smelled like sea salt and expensive leather. Let...
"Get out," I said, but my voice came out thin and shaking. Lincoln Warren stood in the doorway, back to me, one cold shoulder bare in the dim light. A stack of papers hit the bed with a soft slap. The divorce papers fanned like a cruel fan. "Juliana, stop pretending," he said. "Don't put on that act." I pressed my palm to my throat. "Lincoln, we just married. I—" He turned slowly. His face was empty. "Do you think for one second I married you out of love? I married because my...
"I got 731," I said when the message finally blinked on my phone. "You got 731?" my mother repeated, breathless with a laugh that had the tired edges of all the years she'd carried alone. "Yes." I let the number settle between us like a small, hot stone. "And—" I hesitated because the truth felt both ridiculous and necessary, "—my sister got 317." My mother wiped her hands on her apron, eyes gone wet for a moment. "Jaden, that's... you did it. You did it." I should have felt whole....
"The cup hit my arm." I jerked awake, my arm burning, and the memory hit me harder than the pain. "The cup hit me," my father had said, and then the hall went silent. "You know your crimes?" his voice had filled the great hall like thunder. "I did what was right," I said then. "He stole the white elder's pill. He deserved it." "You beat him until he could never walk again." He spat the words. "You broke laws, child." "I did not break the law," I said. "I broke a thief." They had...
I woke up to the wrong ceiling. "Where am I?" I muttered, and my hand found cool, unfamiliar sheets. The chandelier was a crystal galaxy. Red banners nodded at the balcony wind like a festival. I blinked and tried to sit up. "Elden, you awake?" a voice called from somewhere down the hall. "Elden?" The name sounded like a bell in my head. Elden Weber, the man whose face had haunted half the city and three chapters of the book I had skimmed before sleep stole me. I remembered—no, not my...
“I’m done,” I said, and walked out. I left Braxton’s condo with my coat on the couch and his laugh still in my ears. I walked into a bar and drank until the world slurred. I meant to cry. I ended up clinging to a stranger. “He’s my cousin,” he said, when I asked him to come home with me. “I don’t care,” I said. “Do you want to come upstairs?” He had a neat jaw, the kind of calm face doctors wear. He smiled like a man who had practiced not feeling. “I’m Adrian Chavez.” “I know who...
"I opened my eyes to damp air and the cold bite of tile." "The bathtub looked like a shallow grave." "I remember the knife." "The blood looked like it wanted to keep me under." I had no right to wake up. I shouldn't have woken. But I did. I climbed out of the tub, every muscle complaining, and found my wrists already scarred and knitting themselves back to ordinary skin. "Who is this?" a ringing phone demanded on the table. "Answer me, you—" "Anna?" I croaked when I finally...
I knocked until my knuckles hurt. The woman inside the door moved like she owned the night. The light through the peephole showed a braid, a silk robe, a hand on a towel. My own hand trembled and I told myself to breathe. “Who is it?” a voice called. “It’s me,” I said. “Open the door.” There was a long pause. Then the lock clicked and the door opened a hair. “Faith?” she said, and then she saw me. Her face changed fast, like a light being switched from warm to cold. The...
I never thought I would say this out loud: I loved him like he was the moon I could never reach. My name is Jazmine Wilson. He was Eliot Wallace. We were young and messy and cruel in the way we loved. "You really came," I said the first time I saw him again at an airport lounge. "Of course I did," Eliot said, not looking around. "You look tired." "You mean like a ruin?" I answered. "Like a book everyone skimmed and then shelved." He smiled the way he always did, slow like a tide....
I had driven into spring the way someone chases a late train — too many stops, not enough patience. The street was full of magnolia blossoms. The city smelled like wet earth and new things. I was already tired from five hours on the road when Ensley called. "Where are you?" Ensley asked, voice bright as a bell. "Half hour," I said. "Slow down. Don't be reckless," she teased. "Shut up, Your Royal Highness," I answered. "Good. Your loyal subject is waiting." We met at Carlotte....
I broke my leg collecting herbs. "I told you not to climb that slope," Layne said when she came for me, breathless from running down the mountain path. "You left me alone," I answered, tasting the dirt in my mouth. "I can pick herbs just fine." "Then why are you on your back?" she shot back, softer when she touched my knee. "Berkley, don't be dramatic." "One fall," I said, trying to smile. "One... big fall." Her fingers were warm and clumsy. She helped me stand. The pain stung...
I woke up to shouting, to the dry sting of sunlight and the smell of wet straw and old sweat. I blinked and the world spun—then steadied into a shabby roof, rickety beams, and the sound of someone crying like their heart had been ripped out. "Not—don't take my sister! Don't! Please—" a child's voice cut through the noise. "Shut up, you little pest, get away from my legs!" an old woman barked, spitting duty and greed in equal measures. I tried to breathe and my lungs felt wrong. My...
They called me the youngest head of obstetrics in the city hospital and meant it as a compliment. I called myself someone who loved order—charts, protocols, clean truths. I never expected my life to be rearranged by a blood test, a maternity photo, and the sound of a chair being thrown. "I'm sorry," I told the woman on the stretcher. "Doctor," she whimpered. "Please. I can't—I'm so scared." "I need the bleeding history again," I said, calm as a metronome. "When was the pain? Any...
"I fell into the puddle and tasted mud." I spit, stand up, and kick a brick into the rain. The brick skids, hits the gutter, and sinks. My jacket is dark with mud. My hair sticks to my neck. I am nothing but a white coat turned brown and a stomach that keeps hollering. "Hey! You—get out of here!" someone shouts from behind a glass window. He is the shop owner. He is small and mean. His name is Javier Larson. He locks the door with one hand and waves a plastic bag in the...
I remember deciding, very carefully, to look fragile. "I will call your mother," Leonor Webb said as she sat at my bedside, sounding as if she measured her words before sending them out like coins. "Do," I murmured. I let my hair fall loose, black and heavy, and let my voice be thin. It was not an act of weakness; it was a strategy. I had watched enough old tragedies to know how to play the pale invalid. "Are you thirsty?" Mary Renard asked, offering a cup of warm water. Her fingers...
"I won't do it." I said it loud enough so the whole room could hear. Valentino Schwarz smiled like a man already in possession of a kingdom. "You will," he said. "You always do what you are told." I looked at him, at the elegant span of his shoulders, at the slow amusement in his eyes. The chandelier light sliced across his jaw, and for a moment I felt the old, nausea-making trick: he could make me see shadows and call them truth. "You think this is a performance," I said. "It was...
"Hands off me." My knuckles slammed into a pair of rough palms, and a man's arms tightened around my waist like iron. "Ow—" I hissed, then froze. "Elizabeth?" A voice I had memorized in the marrow stopped me. My fingers slipped. I cupped his face with both hands. "Ely? Ely Finch—" He blinked as if woken from a bad sleep. "You called me a name I like." Tears slid out of me without permission. "You died. I died. I blew the car up and—" His thumb wiped my cheek, gentle as a...
