Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 388 short novels in Face-Slapping
I never planned to become a planner of ruin. I planned for a quiet life. I planned for city office hours, for the children's laughter, for New Year dinners that smelled like soy and ginger. Then everything changed on a snowy New Year's Eve. "Come, sit," my aunt said, patting the wooden chair beside her. Her voice was soft when guests were near, sharp when the room emptied. "Sit where?" I asked. "You and June must understand," she said, looking around to make sure no one watched....
"I stole his phone and found a call labeled 'Raquel.'" I remember how my hands shook when I saw the name flash on Apollo's screen. I remember the rush of anger and something colder under it: the feeling that I was finally done pretending. "Who is Raquel?" I asked Apollo that night, holding his phone like evidence. He didn't look at me. He looked at the living room floor and answered, "A long story." Then he walked away. He had been walking away from me for four years. "You think...
"I don't want you to say anything else. Sign here." I pushed the pen down and the paper slid under my fingers like a trapdoor. "Leanna," Vaughn said, very quietly, "I offered you houses, a downtown duplex, and ten million. Is there anything more you want?" "You offered me things," I said. "You offered me my life as a purchase order." He didn't look ashamed. He looked like a man reading a catalog. "You slept with him, didn't you?" Vaughn asked, then laughed the laugh people laugh...
"I took the picture." I was holding the camera like a weapon when the hotel door cracked open. "You promised to marry Alexis, Miles," a sneering voice said. "Why are you still seeing me, Claudia? Alexis won't know." "Heh," came another voice, rough and drunk. "I'm marrying her for the project money. When it's done, I'll throw her away." Click. Click. Click. "I told you to stop!" they both cursed as I snapped more shots. "I signed the wedding off," I said aloud to myself....
"I slammed the taxi door and my phone buzzed with 'Rex Branch' on the screen." I looked up at the orange sky and felt like smiling, then the name stole it. I answered on the second ring. "Emi, you're back?" Rex's voice was flat, sharp. It never softened. "Yep," I said. "Just landed." "Come to the office," he ordered. "Now." "Okay," I said, and the smile that had started to come back died. I put my head down and cursed like a private choir against one man: Rex Branch, my market...
I remember the rain like a string of pearls across the city moat—the willow tips trembling and wet. The house at the end of the long red-lit street smelled of oil lamps and wet cloth and the particular nervous sweetness of a wedding night. I was carried through it all as if I were a rumor: hands at my elbows, rush of skirts, a drum of congratulations that I heard but did not understand. "Newlyweds to the bridal chamber!" someone called, and the room rose in one wave of noise that pressed me...
I died on a mountain road and woke up in someone else’s life. "Laney," I said as the world spun, "where am I?" "You’re back," the little voice said, "and I’m your contract." Laney—small, round, smug—floated over my shoulder like a stubborn moth. She looked nothing like the cold, clinical AIs I’d read about. She blinked, folded imaginary arms, and spoke like a teenage gossip. "Don’t call me a moth," she pouted. "Call me Laney. Call me your bind. Call me the reason your life stopped...
I am Jensen Baldwin. I graduated with a master's degree. I had a boyfriend, Raphael Davenport, who was kind, steady, and from a family that owned a factory. I thought what we had was simple and honest. Then my aunt Susanne Cotton and her daughter Adelyn Moreau started a storm I never saw coming. "It'll be fine, Mom," I told my mother the night before we drove to Raphael's family's house for New Year. "We're just visiting." "Just visiting," my mother repeated, not sounding convinced. We...
I was twelve when the world I trusted split along a seam I never saw. "My daughter will live with me," I said in the courtroom, and I meant it as a promise to my mother. I meant it as a shield. "I understand," my father murmured, mouth dry, while the judge looked through us like we were weather. The room smelled of paper and stale perfume. My mother, Mary Gross, sat like a mute monument, pale and fragile as a pressed flower. Fernanda Dunn, my aunt, sat across with Polina Johnston—a child...
I woke up with my neck killing me and my ribs like they'd been judged and found wanting. "Ow—who did this to me?" I hissed into the dimness. "Three! Where is she?" a distant voice shouted. I blinked and felt two strange, heavy lumps under my hands. My fingers froze. "What on earth—" "Stop staring and get up!" another voice barked. I pushed myself up despite the pain and saw motion: a masked figure in black fighting someone in yellow by a river, and a handsome man in moon-colored...
My head felt like an exposed light bulb under a desk lamp. "Drip. Drip." Something hot landed on the back of my skull. I flinched and put my fingers to my hair. "Ouch—" My middle and index fingers stuck together. The glue smelled bitter and bright. I turned slowly. Tilda Buckley was standing over me, the torn pages of my physics workbook in her other hand. She held a cheap tube of glue like a prize. "Sorry, Elliana," she said faux-sweet, and pinched the work in a way that made...
I woke under the moon and first saw a woman above me, her face twisted like a lesson I had failed to learn. "Little wretch! How dare you glare at me?" she hissed, and the whip in her hand sang like broken promises. I tried to move. I could not. "I told you not to make a face." She leaned in, voice sharp. "Tomorrow you will kowtow to Prince Dax De Luca. Don't think you'll be his bride." I smelled blood and old silk. I felt the whip as it cut, but I couldn't move my limbs. I could...
I am Juliana Buck, seventeen, in a dress that pinches my ribs and a temperament that will not be pinched down. Today my sister Megan Price is getting married. The house smells of jasmine and packet tea. The sunroom door—the big glass door with the brass handle—has been my fortress for an hour. "Give me nine-nine-nine-nine-nine," I say, and my voice is sharper than I meant. "Juliana," Dad—Bernabe Boyle—says from the other side of the glass. "Stop. It's your sister's wedding." "Then have...
I remember the exact crease of the paper before it hit the air. "How did you do on your exam?" Kylie asked, leaning on my shoulder outside the school gate. "I'll show you." I flicked my wrist and handed the score paper to her. She squinted, then stuck her head close, making a mocking sound. "Two points more than me," she crowed. "You sneaky brat." "I sneaky? You were the one who secretly studied," I shot back. Kylie laughed and draped an arm over my neck. "Fine, fine. We're both...
"I won't marry you," I said, and the hall went silent. "Elisabetta—" Preston Renard's voice cracked like thin glass. He stood between tables of white roses and the crowd, his tux coat clean but his face raw. Brooke Wong's hand flew to her mouth. "You can't do this now." "I can," I said. "I will." I had not planned a speech. I had planned a quiet untying of myself from a life that belonged to some other version of me. But a video counts. A proof counts. And a crowd never leaves a wound...
"I’m pregnant with your husband’s child," the message read. "I told him he should leave you. He promised. Do you want to be fair? You’ve had five years and no baby. He wants a child. Let him have me." I stared at the unknown number. I put the phone down and blocked it without typing a reply. "This is the third time," I told myself out loud. "Third time in three months." "Gavin," I asked him directly that night. "Are you having a baby with someone else?" He smiled like he had done...
I am Emmaline Newton. I study art and I owe myself a lifetime of small, honest obsessions: painted pines, stubborn bamboos, and the smell of a bakery at noon. I tell this story because once, a girl in a yellow dress became dust, and I could not let her vanish like a forgotten brushstroke. "It's October," my friend Daria Reynolds said after class. "The whole city is doing autumn right." "High school feels like a race," I answered. "But some lines need time. They shouldn't be...
"The door clicked open." "I didn't hear you come in," I said, pushing my wheelchair toward the hallway. "You smell gas again?" Reid Hahn's voice was flat as stone. He stood in the doorway in a raincoat, the rain dripping off his shoulders like nothing mattered. "I forgot the stove," I said. "I will fix it." "You always forget," he said. "Just delete my fingerprint from the lock." "I forgot. I'll do it." My hands trembled but I smiled. Reid didn't look at me. He walked straight...
"I pulled the hairpin free." "Stop her!" someone screamed. I had the whole hall in my hands for one instant — red silk, lantern light, whispers like knives. I pressed the cold metal to my palm and stepped forward until I was close enough to feel her breath. "You finally leave," I whispered. Kathryn Gonzalez laughed like a bell. "My dear, you are at your wedding. Calm down." "Not my wedding," I said. "Not my life." She gave me that mild look a woman gives a servant who...
I died under gray snow and rotten teeth, and then I sat up in a bed that smelled of perfume and starch and sleep, and I decided I would not die for anyone's plot again. "Don't leave me, don't leave me," a voice had screamed when I was still flesh and torn, and men with clean collars had smiled down at me and walked away. I remember the smell of blood on my own ankles, the water-slick of the blade that had cut me open. I remember a man—tall, a government of charm—carrying another woman like a...
