Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I spent eighteen years inside the stone-cool arms of a monastery. When I walked back into the capital as a princess, the world split along the seam of my return. Some people reached for me like a sun-starved thing, others shrank as if my shadow might bite. My mother, the Empress, apologized at court and promised me one thing in front of everyone: one wish would be granted. I looked until I could no longer keep the smile off my face, pointed through the crowd, and said, "Make Eliot Marino my...
I spat a string of bubbles and bit down on something hard and cold. "Ugh," I muttered, my tail flicking. "Who made food this miserable?" The crystal shard tasted like frozen stone, but it kept me alive. I was a fish—bright red, scales like embers—and there was a black mark on my left shoulder that looked like a half-winged butterfly. I had fallen from a circus swing, remember? One minute I was flying above the tents, the next I was sinking into a pond that felt like the inside of a...
"I can't lie," I told the room full of microphones. "I have someone I like." "Who is it?" the reporters shouted like a small wave. "It's Evan," I said. "Wait—Evan Williams?" one woman asked, her pen stabbing the air. "Yes," I said. They screamed the rest themselves. The headlines did the work for them. Overnight my name climbed to the top of every trending list. Someone clipped the moment, looped it, and added a chorus of speculations. I sat in my car outside the press center and...
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....
They put my name on the giant banner and made the whole hotel smell like lilies and roasted meat. "I didn't ask for all this," I muttered, fingering the edge of the microphone. "Thank you, everyone." The applause washed over me like a warm current; the lights made my glasses glint. I tried to smile small. I tried to be the grateful, polite daughter everyone expected. "Indigo!" my mother called softly from the front row. "Say something about—" "Thank you," I said into the mic, and heard...
I never liked being the loudest person in a room, but I am loud enough when it comes to what is mine. "Don't look at me like that," I told the girl sprawled on the bed when she tossed my suitcase and my shirts into the bin. "Those dresses? Those are mine." She sat up, game controller in hand, and blinked. "Who cares? They're just clothes." "I care." My voice was flat. "You owe me an explanation." "Explain what? Maybe you're jealous," she sneered, not bothering to stand. Lisa Bonilla...
“Give me the wild vegetables and eggs,” Brittany Brooks snapped, and I hugged my basket harder. “I need them for my mother and my brothers,” I said, and felt my voice wobble. “You fox and her brat don’t deserve food,” Brittany said, and grabbed. I ran. She shoved me. I fell. I remember the cliff, the dark, and the cold. Then a white flash and the sound of a phone I’d just bought in my other life humming in my hand. I opened my eyes to a low thatch ceiling, to a woman wiping...
"I think we should talk tonight," I said, lighting a candle. "It’s Friday," Brooks said, smiling like he always did on our ritual nights. "Our deep talk night." "I know." I poured the wine. "Just—let's be honest, okay?" He laughed and kissed my temple. "Always honest." Then I saw it: a fresh red spot on the back of his shoulder, right by the spine. It looked like someone had popped it earlier that day. "Who did that?" I asked instead of asking anything subtle. "I—" He didn't...
They say some people are written roles they cannot escape. I used to believe that too, because for a long time I thought I was only what others named me: the cold girl, the disappointed heir, the unlovable one. "My name is Emmeline Brady," I say, because names matter and I keep mine like a clean room. There is a boy everyone loves. "Flynn," I would whisper if anyone asked who he was to me. Flynn Mitchell has always been a small sun. He smiled like a weather report promising warmth. He was...
"I can fly higher!" I shouted as I tugged at the ice bird's feather and laughed until my ribs ached. My mother scowled like the sky before a storm, and my heart beat strange. I did not think about shame. I only thought about the wind and the bird and the feel of cold on my palm. The selection for Skycrest Academy was today. The test was simple to say and deadly to try: stay on the back of the ice bird for the time of one incense stick. The bird hated humans. It sprayed ice at anyone who...
I did something nobody expected: I took my brother's Maybach keys and sat in the leather seat. "Get out," he had said on the phone. "No, you get out," I texted back silently. When the dorm gossip started, my roommates turned on me fast and loud. I screenshot the first message and sent it to my brother. "Don't be shameless, stealing other people's men," one of them wrote. "You're making this a drama?" I showed Desmond the screenshot. He replied with a string of emojis and a single...
I named every camera. I sat in the dark room and gave each of the thirteen lenses a small human name so I could feel less like an observer and more like an owner. Camera One watched the front door. Camera Two watched the hallway. Camera Three watched the living room from a vase of fake orchids. Camera Seven was tucked into the frame of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. All of them fed to my wall of screens, and the wall of screens fed me Everlee. "I like watching her when she thinks...
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...
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....
"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 can kiss you, can't I?" I said it and felt stupid for saying it first. He smiled once, small and private. "Yes." I laughed, then whispered, "Your body is amazing. Can I—" He cut me off with a grin. "Of course you should try." My face went blank. "What? No—" "I mean, try learning from me," he said, then pulled me close. I scrambled, words spilling out in a panic. "Wait, wait—I'm only asking about gym tips. I didn't mean—" He tightened his arms and mouthed the words I...
I woke to snow on my sleeves and a man kneeling in the courtyard refusing to stand. "Get up," I told him, and the snow rimed his hair like a crown he had not wanted. "Your Highness," he said, without looking up. "I cannot." "Then I'll shelter your head from the cold." I held my umbrella over him because that was the only comfort I could spare. "Your Highness," he said again, finally raising his eyes. "I already have someone I love. I cannot go through with the marriage." I let...
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 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...
“Stop! You'll kill him!” a thin, frightened voice cried. I opened my eyes to the taste of iron and a world that bled around the edges. My body folded under a pain I knew too well. My head said one thing and my bones another. “Gunner— I mean— answer me! Are you awake?” Alana Chaney's hands shook as she gripped my shoulder. “Alana,” I said, and the name felt strange and safe on my tongue. “Pack quickly. We go to the capital tonight.” She blinked, wet eyes bright in the half-light....
