Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"Please, please, save my father," I begged, my forehead pressed to the ICU glass. I could see his hand twitch under the blankets. Machines were loud and red. I felt small and empty. "Blakely," Xander Black said behind me, his voice flat as steel. "Look at him." He shoved my head so hard my lips left a smear on the glass. "He used my mother," Xander spat at the old man on the bed. "He lied. He let her drown and blamed her. You think I won't make them pay?" My father tried to...
I remember the thunder the night my son stopped breathing. "I can't—" I tried to hold him upright, whispering nonsense that sounded like a spell. "Elias, don't go. Elias, don't go." "Bring David!" I screamed until my throat tore. People rushed, lantern light cutting the rain into sharp knives. "He must come," I begged the eunuchs. "Go—now!" They ran and did not return with him. They returned with David Armstrong with someone else in his arms—Emerie Espinoza, pale as moonlight, her...
I was ten the first time someone called me anything but "the runt" or "little pest." My name was a sound, a silly syllable adults used when no one else was near: "Janessa," they never said it, so I said "I" and the house listened. "Don't go down there," Wilma warned as she tightened my sleeve. "I want to see her," I whispered. "Don't say that name," Wilma spat. "She killed people." "Who?" I asked, voice small as a mouse. "She," Wilma said, and her face went hard like a rock....
I am Elaina Sherman. "I saw them," I told myself like an accusation. "I saw them together." They were the two people who had built the map of my life—Atlas Green and I used to joke that maps led to treasure; Annabelle Chang and Carter Malik were part of my coastline, my safe harbor. Now that coastline had been cut by a jagged reef. "I can't believe she would do this," I said out loud to the empty room, because speaking softened the ache a little. "You have to decide," Atlas told me...
I break the water and cough my first ragged breath. "Where am I?" I say. A cold boat of panic pushes through my chest. I wipe river water off my face and stare at my hands. They are smooth, not scarred like the hands that dug traps and handled venom in the valley where I grew up. Memories slam in like a stampede. I died. Then I woke up inside someone named An Mengqing. She is the rich daughter of a top family in the capital. She married a man named Landon Bruno — the city’s coldest...
I never expected one message to rearrange my world. "A photo for you," read the chat preview. Then a small, smug line: "Your husband sleeps so sweet in my arms." I stared at the image until my eyes blurred. The man in the photo was unmistakable: Brady Fleming, my Brady, turned away so his face wasn't fully visible, but his broad shoulders and the little mole by his left ear—mine to remember—made it him. "Who is this?" I whispered to myself, but my voice sounded thin and useless in the...
I flew through three time zones to fold myself into a surprise I had planned for two years: Eliot Beard's birthday. I imagined his laugh, the old way he would cup my face like a child and say, "You always make everything dramatic." I imagined the candlelight and the look in his eyes that could still make me feel dizzy. Instead I found him with another woman in his arms, laughing with his friends, and heard him say, loud and careless, "I was just playing with her. Me? Marry her? Would you...
I woke because a child screamed, "Don't eat my sister!" I sat up in a tangle of roots and cold. The moon pinched through the branches. My hands were small, my clothes coarse. I blinked, tasted iron, and remembered nothing of the farm and quiet life I'd planned. "Amelia?" a boy breathed. "Amelia, you're awake." I looked at the boy. He was five, all knobbled knees and trust. He wore torn sleeves and a bravery that did not belong to the place. I realized then my voice could come from this...
"Happy birthday, Kataleya," my mother said, but her smile never reached her eyes. "I hope your new job goes well." My father stacked a small box beside the cake. "Blow it out," my sister whispered, almost too quiet to hear. I laughed, "I wish I never had to deal with annoying customers again. And I wish that woman who complained about me at work gets the worst year possible." "That's a strange wish," my brother said without looking up from his book, "but okay." They sang. I...
I remember the color of the night when the palace told me that the Empress had burned. It was the kind of cold that made breath into thin glass; the hall candles were low and watery. When I slipped into the audience chamber, I found my brother, Emperor Daxton Braun, bent over piles of red ink and seals like a man trying to hold together a map whose rivers were already wrong. "She burned herself?" I asked, because the rumor in my chest wanted to be named. "She burned," he said without...
I remember the night my bridal fan slipped from my hands and the room stayed suddenly too large. "You will live in the Eastern Palace, and there are ways to settle in," Jalen Archer said without looking. "If you need anything—food, clothing—ask Asami. She is kind." "I know," I answered. I said nothing about the sound of my home, the white poplars, the caravan bells of Yumen. I kept the fan folded in my lap and watched his sleeve leave the bed. I was fifteen; the prince and his wife had a son...
I wake to a wet, warm tongue on my face, and the first sound I make is a soft, helpless sound. Then I open my eyes. "Hey—stop that!" I say, but it comes out small. A pair of blue eyes blink at me. A huge muzzle pulls back and shows sharp white teeth. I freeze. The animal is huge. White fur like snow. Ears straight up. Claws like small knives. This is not a dog. "Who—who are you?" I whisper, though I am not sure who I mean. The wolf sniffs me again. It makes a low sound that I think...
“Don’t come any closer.” I said it before I could think. My voice shook anyway. Ewan stopped three steps away and stared at me like I had said something rude to the sun. “Relax,” he said. “It’s just a curtain.” “Not funny.” I tugged the towel tighter around me. He sighed, as if the world owed him patience. “You dry yet?” “I’m always dry,” I snapped, but I sat down on the edge of his bed anyway. I wanted to be where I could see him. I wanted him to know I could see him. His...
"You won't leave me, right?" Griffin Alves' voice was small, like someone asking whether the sun would set tonight. I looked at him. His face was all too beautiful and all too dangerous. I had been with him since I was eighteen. I had been his maid, his night-keeper, the hand that smoothed his hair when nightmares tore at him. Four years of being his shadow. Four years of being paid to stay. "Griffin," I said softly, "I've always been here." He laughed a little, swallowed, then said,...
I remember the clink of chain on stone as if it were a clock that always counted down. "Sister," a childlike voice called from the doorway. "Did you hide?" "I hid," I whispered between the mattress and the floorboards. I bit my lip until it bled so I wouldn’t make a noise. My breath lived in the gaps between the slats. "Found you!" The curtain ripped away and the face swung into my world—Emmett Yang's grin upside down, hair falling like a child's. My legs tried to run and didn't. He...
I still remember the way his room smelled like cheap cologne and old pizza when I found them. It was supposed to be a surprise—his birthday present wrapped in tissue, my hands shaking because I wanted it to feel right—but the surprise landed me in the doorway of a scene that told me everything I needed to know. "Who is she?" I said. "She's just a friend," Jackson Hassan said without looking up. "Just a friend who takes off her shirt in your bed?" I said. "Let's not make a scene,"...
I remember the orange bottle first. "Do you know whose bottle this is?" my mother asked in the living room, waving a half-empty orange drink like it was a trophy. "It's Falcon's," my brother said without looking up from his toy. "My private one." "Of course it's Falcon's." Valeria Neal smiled at him as if he were the only sun in the house. "Justine, don't drink his things. You know better." "I was thirsty," I said. "You know better," she repeated, and the words landed like a lid...
I remember the night Alessandro Avery first struck her in front of everyone. "Is she a fake?" he barked, his voice cutting through the hall like a whip. "She—" a new captive who had arrived with the envoys stuttered, "I saw her before. She is not the true princess from the south." "Lie," Hazley whispered, barely audible. "Tell me the truth," Alessandro said. "Are you the southern princess they brought as tribute?" Hazley Schneider sank onto her knees. Her hands folded so...
I was twelve years older than him. I told myself, "If only one of us can live, it must be me." I said it out loud in my head so many times that the words became a shield. "Do you want to go catch crickets?" Julissa's child tugged at her skirt and looked at me. He was small, bright-eyed, and when he smiled it was like a crack of sun through winter clouds. "Yes," I said. "Come with me." I did not know why I offered. I only knew a chessboard took my attention, but children and animals broke...
I remember the palace laughter as if it were another country's weather — warm crowds, rising banners, and a kind of light that never reached the room where I sat. My name is Delaney Vogt, but everyone in the palace used "Empress" when they needed a shape for my duty and a sound for their resentment. When my throne was taken, the title stuck like a bruise. People still bowed; the names changed where worship had to be shown. "Delaney," Lily whispered, pulling a thin cloak around my shoulders....
