Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 329 short novels in Revenge
I still remember the taste of the soup my mother shoved into my cold hands the day everything shifted. "You eat," she said, voice thick with a joy that felt borrowed from someone else's life. "You can't starve yourself." "I won't," I lied, clutching the bowl like a thin shield. We had guests that evening—people polite enough to lower their voices, people who smelled of new suits and older secrets. They left in a hurry; their footsteps skimmed the floor like discarded pages. When the...
I never thought I would turn my life into evidence. "When did you bring them in without telling me?" I said the moment Rohan shut the front door behind him, the voice I used to love sounding like a whip now. Rohan Dupont looked at me like a man who had been caught in an unexpected storm. "Hera, I—" "Don't Hera me." I stepped around a heap of toys and a trail of crumbs. Emmaline sat in the middle of the living room, cheeks wet, looking smaller than the mess around her. "Tell me why my...
I liked to think I knew how to read people. I had worked five years in administration in Beijing, handled office politics and paperwork, and believed I could tell truth from charm. I thought I married a man who believed in logic and fairness. His name was Alexander Cannon, and I loved him. I loved how he listened, how he consulted me when he bought small things, how he joked with me in that soft, earnest way. I called him my reasoning partner, my little philosopher. But one month after our...
I still remember the sound the crowd made that day on the rooftop — a raw, animal noise that rode the wind like a warning. The railing under my palms felt cold and thin, like a promise ready to snap. I didn't move. I only watched. "Don't do it, Jayce," Faron Graves shouted from below, voice blown through a megaphone. His hair flapped in the wind and his eyes were all teeth and light. "Come down, talk to us. We'll help you." "Stay away!" Jayce Koch screamed back. His voice had gone from...
"I can't breathe," I say, and the snow bites my cheeks. They're shouting. Someone throws an egg. Someone else spits a smear of vegetable on my sleeve. "Shame her! Shame her!" a woman screams. I try to tear the cloth from my mouth. "I'm not—" I can't say the words. My mouth is full of rags. "She wanted my husband!" the woman next to me roars. "She wanted my man!" "Stop!" a man's polished shoe lands at my head. "We won't have such shame here." A dozen hands. A dozen...
I still remember the photo the delivery driver sent me. "It’s at the gate. I left it by the pillar," the app text read, and the picture showed a crumpled leaflet and a thermos. I smiled and went down. I wanted a hot box of yellow-braised chicken rice for dinner. But when I reached the gate, the bag was gone. "Someone must have taken it by mistake," I told myself as I walked back toward the dorm. "A wrong order, a mix-up." I checked the building’s tiny surveillance screen the next...
I remember the roses. I remember the white lilies crushed under a thousand shining shoes and the way the air tasted like perfume and flash bulbs. I remember sitting at the end of an aisle that looked like a painted dream and thinking, This is finally done, at last. "You promise?" the host asked, voice bright in the hall. Graham stood before me like always — too beautiful, too calm, the kind of man who made everyone else smaller by existing. He looked at me slow and steady, and I thought...
I did not go to meet Reed Caldwell to beg him back. I went because I found out, by accident and sweating, that the man I was promised to had two plans at once: one plan for me, one plan to burn everything down. "I won't stand with a conspirator," I told myself as I wrapped the letter I meant to deliver. The idea of Reed carving his way into rebellion and pulling everyone I loved into the fire made my stomach knot. The garden room smelled of old paper and plum wine when I stepped inside....
I held Finch's collar and felt the old habit of waiting at the station sink into my bones. "It's okay," I told him, and the dog cocked his head like he understood. "Go on, eat." Finch limped to his bowl. I watched him, then at the uniform folded on the chair where Christopher's medals used to glitter. I could still smell smoke on it, like memory stuck to cloth. "You should be home," I said to the empty room, though the siren of a distant engine answered me. I had learned to talk to the...
"I don't have time to die today." I kicked the taxi door open and rolled off the moving seat. The night air hit my face like a cold hand. My hands still smelled of grease and salt. My heart was thudding, and the airport lights behind me felt like a fake sunrise. Someone had tried to kill me at the airport. Someone had tied me up, injected me, and left me half-blind in a trash-strewn bathroom. I had a smear of white powder under my nails and a crude "U" carved into dust on the wall. I had...
I first saw her on the grand staircase, a white dress flowing like a small flag. "Look," she said, and everyone looked. She smiled like it was her right to smile. That smile landed on me like a stone. "Imogen," Gordon said at my elbow, voice low and warm, "this is my sister." "Maja," she sang, "this is my sister-in-law." My name then was a thin thing some other people had once pressed onto me. I let them call me what they wanted. I let them pretend they did not know me at...
"My husband is dead," I said. "He's in our bed with another woman." "I thought you said you were away for work?" Sebastian asked, voice flat like a scalpel. "I was," I said. "I flew back the afternoon he died." "I need you to tell me everything from the moment you got home," Sebastian Carroll said. "Start at the door." "I opened the front door and the smell hit me," I said. "Rot and blood. I opened windows. I called Silas, then I called the police." "Silas?" he...
"I am the youngest dowager in history," I said, and I could feel the heat of power like a sun on my cheek. "You're choking me," Dalton Montgomery grunted, his voice rough and borrowed from a stranger. "Let go, woman. I'll strike someone." "Strike me if you can," I snapped. "I dare you." He twisted out of my arms and flipped the table, then slammed me down on top of it. He braced his weight across my chest, eyes dark as storm water. "Emery—" he began. "Call me Dowager," I hit his...
I never thought being forgotten could feel like a second life. "You said the warlord is back?" Katelynn burst into the courtyard, her cheeks pink and her eyes wide. "Again?" Finley yawned, ruffling the tiles with her fan. "Does it matter?" "Yes! It matters a lot," Katelynn said. "He didn't come alone." "He didn't?" Heather's chopsticks froze mid-air. "No way," Cecilia whispered, as if the very word might summon him. I put down my cup, looked at the three of them, and let the...
I was dying. "I have pancreatic cancer," the doctor said, looking at me like I was a fragile porcelain doll. "How long?" I asked. "Months, maybe. It's advanced," she answered. I nodded. "Then don't lie to me about hope." That was the honest part. The rest I rehearsed in my head like a speech. "Elliot," I whispered later that night as my phone buzzed. "Don't be late tomorrow." "I won't," he said. "I promise." He had promised me so many things over the years. He had...
They told me what would happen if I loosened my grip: a dozen men would die. They also told me what would happen if I tightened it: my heart would break over and over until it was empty. I chose the first option and wore my uniform like armor. I chose the second one because it was easier to play a fool. "You look thin," Cade said the first morning he woke up in my apartment. "Thanks," I said, and lit a cigarette for the camera I had secretly planted in his coat. "Sleep well?" He didn't...
I had imagined the reunion a thousand different ways. In every one of them, Ace Simmons would meet me with the same fevered eyes, the same breathless promise he had made when he thought I might die at the edge of a battlefield. "One life, one pair," he’d said — the vow tasted like a warm thing I could hold. I thought he had kept it. "You came back," his voice had said as if those two words were all the world. He had held me as if I were the reed of his breath and thought the wound to my ribs...
They said she had fallen out of the sky like a stray comet, that she cried like a child and laughed like a guest at a feast. They called her a saint. They called me a witch. "I am Estelle," I told myself in the mirror. "I am the one who keeps the ledger of the palace and the lives of its people." "Estelle," Jessalyn whispered from behind the curtains, "you've been at the accounts all night. Lie down." "I cannot," I answered. "If I sleep, the rains will come and the granaries will be...
I remember the first time Emiliano climbed the palace wall to peek at me. He laughed when he found me drunk in the courtyard, cheeks flushed, hair loose, a winepot in my hand. "You make a terrible bride," he said, and I wanted to tell him then that I would marry anyone who let me leave the palace alive. "You are stubborn," I told him once, smiling because stubbornness had kept me alive longer than pity ever did. He looked at me like a man seeing a map of someone he didn't need to...
"I almost spilled tea on the general." I say it loud enough to make everyone look up. My hands are still warm from the cup. The courtyard is full of midmorning light. Granny Florence Guo is seated like a small bright moon on her chair. Father, Leonardo Avery, huffs and smiles without much humor. Around us, servants rustle. My chest tightens and I force a laugh. "Miss Isabela," Katherine Butler says softly from the chair across, "you should not stand there with hot tea." "Thanks," I...
