Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I need you to sound like me for three nights," Gemma said, voice low over the phone. "I can do it," I answered, keeping my spoon from clinking. "Promise me you won't blow it," she warned. "Promise," I said. "Good." She sent a voice clip. "He likes a soft, girlish tone. Sing a lullaby, hum a little—he won't tell." I practiced Gemma's cadence for a whole day and night. My twins, Everleigh and Addison, slept through my rehearsals. I hooked my work account, slipped into the...
"I don't let civilians near the front," Grey said the first time he caught me with a camera. I dropped my notebook. "You can't order me around," I snapped back, but my voice shook. He didn't smile. He never smiled. He stood in his full kit like a dark statue, snow on his shoulders, eyes colder than the wind. "You're my niece. Go home." "You're my uncle," I reminded him. "Not my commander." He folded his arms. "Same thing here." I swallowed and did the adult thing: I signed the...
I remember the day at the kindergarten gate as if it were a photograph taken with a hand that trembled. "Daddy only has one little treasure, Elyse. Don't cry, okay?" Daxton Delgado held Yulia Campbell close, his voice soft in a way I had never heard directed at me. I stood in the shadow of a stroller, my small hands curled into fists. I said nothing. I watched him wipe the child's tears with a tenderness I had only ever been shown in the past, before the fire. "Say hello to your...
When I was fifteen, Shane Cummings took my hand and promised me the moon. "I'll keep you safe," he said then, like a vow carved into bone. "Whatever comes, I won't leave you." I believed him the way children believe in tides. I believed him until the winter when the snow fell so hard it erased the world and showed me the shape of his lies. "I have to tell you something," I whispered into the sterile light of the clinic, clutching the pregnancy slip between my fingers. Shane didn't...
1. The countdown read: seven days. "I dreamed about the dead again," I told the camera as I turned the light off. "It felt so real." I, Layne Cotton, had been a streamer since college. Night shifts, late naps. That evening I woke to a flash of memory like a warned alarm. I couldn't tell if it had been a dream or a premonition, but one detail stuck: a scandal about a celebrity, then a news spike, then a tag I did not expect — "rebirth" and "seven days." "Fans are going wild," I said to...
I remember the night the five houses were listed in my name like a small, cruel joke. "I don't want to be apart anymore," Gage said the first night he moved in, and his fingers caught my wrist the way they always had—gentle, claiming, familiar. "Why did you give up your research spot?" I asked him, letting my voice sound casual though my heart wasn't. He'd been set to keep a scholarship and a study route at a top school, and he had walked away when the houses came through. It was the...
I never expected a moonlit cave to hand me the whole world. "I hear a baby," I said, bending closer to the dark, my voice small in the hollow. "You hearing things now, Miriam?" Dieter answered, rubbing his temple. "We've had no sleep for days." "I did," I insisted. "Listen." I moved forward. The sound came again, thin and tired. The earth smelled of smoke and travel, our cart's last grain of flour gone weeks ago, our shoes all split. I reached with both hands into the dark corner and...
I woke up to the living room ringing with applause. "She got everything for her birthday!" "Isabella, come out and blow the candles!" I blinked at the ceiling, at the old phone on the desk, and at the calendar cracking a quiet lie: 2015. "This—" I said out loud to myself, and then to the room. "I'm back." "This is my chance," I whispered. "Julieta?" a small voice called from the hall. "Yes," I answered, sitting up. "I'm Julieta." Isabella Henry barreled into my room with...
"I left the living room light on," I said into the phone and yawned. "Bring someone home, but don't wake me. I get up at eight. Have her out by seven the next morning." "Am I the unkind one?" Desmond laughed, voice easy and poison-soft. "I already booked a hotel." "You're such an asshole," I muttered, then softened. "Just—take care of her." He hummed. "Our anniversary is in two days. Don't forget." "Got it." I hung up, smoothed the silk on my knees, and smiled at my reflection in...
I quit my job on a Tuesday and woke up the next morning feeling like a person who had just broken out of a tight suit of obligations. "I'll sleep for a month," I told myself, stretching on the couch. "No boss calls. No group chats. Just me, my couch, and bad drama on the screen." My apartment was tidy. Old enough to have the small comforts, new enough to not be crowded. One-twenty square meters—cozy by a single person's standard. The estate had been built a year ago; only a few units were...
I never thought childbirth would turn my life inside out. I also never thought that one wooden scent, one white pill, and one dusty USB stick could decide everything. "It’s time," I told Cillian Murray when my stomach tightened that morning. He was already pale by the bed, rubbing his temples like something hurt him inside. "Cillian, help—" I tried to stand and the pain took me. Blood wet my thighs. "Cillian!" He stared for three seconds, then his face fell. "Ah—" He dropped to his...
I was sold into the mountains two years ago. My name is Denver Boone. I still say it to myself at night to keep my feet from sinking into whatever bed of shame I sleep on. "Denver, step out. Come on," Kingston Davidson would bark, and I would obey because obedience kept me alive for a day, for an hour. He kept me on a chain like a dog. "You belong here," Hedda Medina told me, morning after morning, her voice slick with faith. I learned to nod. I learned to measure pain. "I can help you,"...
"You want twenty million dollars to shut up?" I set the laptop down and watched the black bar of the video loop again. "Yes," the man on the other end typed, his voice calm. "Wire it to the account. Or the photos go live." I tapped the table with my fingernail and smiled without warmth. "Tell me your name." "Jack," he said. "Or the name my boss calls me." I stood and walked to the window. The city was a gray sheet of glass. The sky wanted nothing from anyone. "Wire it," I...
I was seven the first time I almost died. "Stay with me," I croaked. "Ariya." She looked older than seven then, quiet as rain. "The spring has come," she said, and pushed a wet branch of spring begonia into my hands. "Where did you get this?" I whispered. My voice was small. The fever had hollowed me out. She smiled the way she always smiled—soft, steady. "I found it in a yard. I thought it would make you better." "I—" I tried to say thank you, but the words were stones in my...
The sun was already high enough to bleach the yard stones when I stopped at the gate of the Wells house. A thin spring wind threaded between cloak and collar and found the skin beneath. I pulled my hood back and let my hair fall; he looked up from his hand on the gate as if the day had been waiting for me. He met my eyes and for a breath the boy I remembered surfaced—honest, startled. Then my face hardened like a coin in a blacksmith’s fist. I took the wedding contract from my bag and laid...
They call me lucky by habit. "Aylin, you married well," people said for years. "Your father built it, you keep the name, Finch runs it." I used to smile. Now my smile had a hole. "It can't be him," I told the screen at midnight. "No way." He was on her bed. The streamer called herself SweetHeart Babe — silly, bright, fake laughter. She played with a silk sleep set and laughed when her viewers flooded the chat with heart emojis. I poured tea and sat, stupidly, to watch her show as a dare...
I slapped the air and cursed, hard. "Are you awake?" a voice said. I blinked. White lights. A bed that was not my bed. Two men leaning over me like they owned the place. "Her vitals are normal," the man with the nervous smile said. "She should wake soon." "She fell three ribs ago," the other said. "Big crash." Big crash? I tried to rise and my hand found nothing—no power, no weight, no force. "Hey — you okay?" the nervous man asked again. He had a name badge: August Cook. I...
I remember the coffee spilling first. "Fill this out," Professor Ulrich Frank had said, and his voice sounded like a bell I could not stop hearing. I saw Laurel Li bent over the paper, hair tucked behind her ear, the way she always concentrated before a test. She was so quiet, so careful. It made me feel sharp, like a knife. "Alonso, don't loiter," Ulrich added without looking at me. The office smelled of old books and coffee. I moved closer. The camera in the corner had a red light. I...
I walked into the Ward mansion in a red dress. "Stay close and do exactly what I tell you," the housekeeper said, her voice steady but her hands shaking a little. "I understand," I said. I kept my head down and walked into the room. He was beautiful even asleep. Sharp cheekbones, thick black lashes, a straight nose. I should have only been a body in a story the family told the old man to get over his grief. I should have only been an actor hired to be a bride for a night. "You're...
They shoved microphones at my face like hungry bees. I let them buzz. "Miss Laurent," a man with a camera said, "what do you say to people calling you spoiled, fake, unworthy of the industry?" "I say," I answered, and my voice was steady like a knife, "you don't get to rewrite my life with three clips and a rumor." "Oh come on, you know the videos—" a reporter barked. "You cut them," I said. "You chose what to air." I smiled. "Now, can we make space? People might get hurt if someone...
