Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I found her on the curb," I said before I could stop myself. The two-year-old's small fingers curled around my index, sticky from ice cream. She blinked up at me with eyes like dark marbles and said, "Daddy?" in a voice that was all hope. A four-year-old boy beside her shrugged, serious as a little judge. "No. She can call you Mama." "I am not your—" I stopped. I wasn't used to being called anything like that. I wasn't used to the tiny body leaning against my leg, or to someone...
I remember the first secret like it was a small stone in my pocket. "My name is Emma," I said once, when I was five and too proud to cry for very long. "Emma?" Grandma laughed and kissed my nose. "Such a neat name. Our little secret is safe." "Secret?" I blinked. "What secret?" "You're mommy and daddy's little secret," she said, very soft, like she was tucking a blanket over the word. I never asked why after that. Secrets were like the rabbit I slept with—small, warm, and carrying the...
"I don't want trouble," I said, and shoved him against the bathroom stall. He smelled of cold coffee and cigarette smoke. He was tall and quiet and very, very solid. The men's room at the charity party was too small for the fans outside and too loud for the two of us inside. I twisted my coat around his shoulders like a cloak and pressed my palm to the back of his neck. "Do you always hide in bathrooms?" I teased. "Or is tonight special?" He didn't smile. He lowered his forehead...
I woke with the taste of someone else's breath still warm on my tongue and a name like a secret pressed against my ribs. "Rafael… mine," I whispered to the empty air and surprised myself with how steady it sounded. A knock at the door dragged me back into the shabby little desk, the thin mattress, the small life I'd borrowed for a week. I blinked the dream away and found my palms sweaty and my cheeks wet with tears I hadn't known I cried. I sat up, wrapped my school uniform tighter around my...
I never meant to make anyone a lesson. I only wanted my life back. "I don't want to see Miles again," I told my friends the night we signed the papers. They laughed and raised their glasses. "Good. Burn bridges," Emmett said, clapping his hand against mine. Ten days later, at a private party for friends, I saw him. Of course I did. The circles overlap in this town like two tapes woven too tight. I wasn't drunk that night; I kept my hands to myself and my tone polite. "Miles," I said...
I came back on the hottest day of the year and the sky hated me for it. “I’m soaked,” I said, standing in the elevator lobby, my suitcase wheels puffing steam. “Of course I’m soaked.” A man in black opened the stairwell door and the rain punched the corridor into a waterfall. He stepped out like he owned the storm. He had a cigarette between his teeth and a corner-of-the-mouth smile that used to be mine and his. “Harrison?” I heard myself say before my brain stopped working. He...
"I’m falling!" The metal beam cracked over my head and the lights went wrong like someone cut a string. "I need you to move!" a man shouted behind me. I froze. The crowd pushed. I smelled hot wires and heard someone scream my name. Then strong hands shoved me forward. "Jaylee!" I heard him say. "Get down!" A huge shadow hit the ground where I had been standing. Dust hit my face. I tasted metal. I coughed and my legs refused to work. "Gallagher!" I screamed, pushing through...
I remember the shape of the footprint before I remember the sky that night. "I stepped into it," I told no one at first. "You're laughing," my mother said when I tried to explain. "Soledad, who did you meet in the woods?" "I met nobody," I answered. "Then why is your belly up?" she snapped, and the palm on my face burned longer than the surprise. "Don't speak like that," I whispered, pressing my hand against the growing hollow. "I didn't—" "You did," she cut in. "You walked in...
"I saved the image." I said it to my phone and to no one else, thumb trembling. "Why?" Fraser laughed over my shoulder two seconds later. "Because I'm curious," I lied. I am Elias Jenkins. I'm seventeen. I was supposed to be asleep, but I was scrolling through a forum at 2:00 a.m. when a post made my stomach go cold. "Guys, save your shoes. Don't add me. I quit," the top line read, then the doctor started typing like someone trying to outrun a storm. "It was delivered to our...
I am Gwen Cameron. I write scary stories in the small hours, because the dark makes the words easier. Tonight, the dark is louder than my stories. "Don't make a sound! Someone got into the dorm!" Alexandra Roberts texted me out of nowhere. "Alex? Why are you up?" I whispered, though the phone was on my chest and nobody could hear me. "That thing should be at your 203 soon. Someone on floor three messed with a pen spirit. I told the teacher. It’s coming down. Pretend to be asleep,...
"Follow me." I step out of the classroom and my throat goes dry. My hand still holds the strap of my backpack. The corridor smells like chalk and hot metal. The boy in front of me doesn't turn. He walks like someone who expects the world to give him room. "You're Marie, right?" he says without looking back. "Yes." I answer. My voice is small. My heart hammers. He keeps walking. I hurry after him. He is taller than I remember from the photos. He has broad shoulders, a neat...
"Don't open the door. Whoever comes—don't open the door!" "Emersyn?" I murmured into the phone, then heard the scream that killed the rest of her words. The line filled with ragged breaths, a torn-off moan, then a wet, metallic tearing sound. "Tear—" the sound ended in a busy tone. I looked at the clock: 4:01 a.m. I yawned, wrapped the quilt around my shoulders, and tried to fall back asleep. "Bang!" Something hit the ceiling like a fist. I shot upright. "It's nine o'clock," I...
"He put his hands around my waist and kissed my neck." "I said, 'Don't. I'm making breakfast.'" "No you aren't. You want something else." He laughed in my ear, spun me, and my back hit the kitchen table. His face filled my world. His mouth covered mine. "Stop—" I tried to pull away, but the kiss swallowed my words. He tasted the coffee I'd just brewed and the last night's wine. He nibbled my neck like it was his right. "You're softer than five years ago," he murmured. He...
"They said we should eat the big one tonight." "They said the small ones are tender," the other one hissed. "The old woman can wait." "Don't—don't eat—my girl!" the scared voice broke. I snapped upright, hands clamping empty air. "Don't you dare," I said before I even knew I spoke English in a different year. They froze with the knife halfway down. I smelled rot, fear, and sweat. I pushed up, and the oldest of the two kidnappers watched his grin die: "She's awake." "You—" the...
"I can't breathe!" I shouted, because my lungs felt full of cotton. "Carmen! Help her, help her!" a woman screamed beside me. I blinked and the world tilted. My hands were rough, my clothes were coarse, and my belly was hard and round. My head burned. The woman beside me had a voice like a bell and hands like river stones. She cried so loud the moon seemed to flinch. "Carmen?" I said, and then remembered I had no right to that name. Yet my mouth knew it. "Adelyn?" she answered, but...
I never thought an empty apartment could have a sound of its own. "I left. Don't call me," Felicity said, and the door slammed. I put my headset back on and aimed my crosshair at a moving target. "Fine," I muttered to the mic. "See you later." I wasn't proud of how easily I let the door close behind her. We'd had arguments like this every few weeks, the same hurricane, the same tidy calm afterward. "She'll cool off," I told myself. "She always does." When the house fell into...
“Get out of my sight.” I swatted the hand away and stepped back, letting the wedding dress trail over the dusty floor. My cousin Bridget Owens only laughed, a thin, cruel sound. “Corinna, everyone knows the Castillo family fell. And there are rumors—terrible ones. Who would want to marry a man who prefers men? You don’t have to go through with this.” “I never said I don’t want to marry,” I said, fastening a simple earring in front of the cracked vanity mirror. “You’re not listening....
"I don't like men," I said loud enough for the room to hear. They all laughed. I wanted them to laugh. "That's a lot of words for a singer," Jacob Hawkins said from the booth. "Who's the lucky man who broke you?" "Nobody," I said. "Nobody is allowed." I had just finished a set at Jasper's bar. The lights were low. The crowd was kind. I had sung my throat raw for thirty minutes and the applause still felt like a warm coat. I liked that. I liked work that paid bills and left no room...
I was taking off my bra in the bathroom, a little buzzed from wine and a little ashamed of the wine, when I saw him in the mirror. "Hi," said a face that was too young to be steady in any reflection. He looked like a high-school kid—thin, all sharp angles and bone, hair like he had not seen a barber in a while. "Who are you?" I managed. My voice came out thin. He didn't blink. "Luke." Luke. He was right there, clear as the glass, staring without expression. "You're—" I stopped....
I found the note under Autumn's pillow with a hand that was still shaky enough to make the ink blot. "Don't go into the extra room," it said. "What extra room?" I whispered to the quiet apartment, and the ceiling answered with nothing at all. I should have listened better to Autumn the week before. She had tried to tell me something. She had started to say it and then stopped. "I was thinking—" she had begun, with that uneven laugh she used when she pretended to be easy. "After the...
