Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I saw them through the doorway before I could think. "Who do you love more, Henrik… me or Lenora?" a woman's voice purred like honey. "Baby, of course I love you the most," Henrik Blevins breathed. His voice was rough, broken, sweaty. He clutched Lenora Santiago like he had been punched by a fever. I stood frozen in my white shirt and floral skirt. My heels clicked against the hallway tile and sounded so loud it broke the room's rhythm. My fiancé lay across the bed, his face flushed...
“I don’t want the house. I want the last two months to be calm.” I said it like a fact, like ordering a cup of tea. “Calm?” Callahan Carvalho laughed and put his hand on the piano lid. “You say calm and then you glue yourself to every little thing that can go wrong.” I closed my eyes. “We agreed to keep the year polite. No scenes. No shouting in front of the parents. Buy-and-sell done after New Year.” “You sound like a lawyer,” he said. “Not my wife.” “You sound like a man who...
"I hate all of this," I said, more to the plate of cold noodles than to anyone else. "You're twenty-three," my mother said, voice thin with the practiced worry of someone who never stops worrying. "You can't wait forever. Go on one date. Just one." "I work," I said. "I live. I am not a timeline." "Then I'll make the timeline." She laid a phone on the table like a land mine. "I've put your picture up online. Someone messaged. Go meet him." "I didn't say yes to anything." "And you...
"I want him," I said, and the whole room turned toward me. People froze. Glass chimed. A man laughed like it was a joke. Then Cooper Jordan looked up from his birthday seat, slow and calm, and his smile sharpened. "Katharine Charles," he said, with that half-amused, half-mean tone he used to have even in high school. "You really know how to make an entrance." "Where is my brother?" I asked. My voice was small and fierce. Rain had soaked my hair. My palms were cold under my coat....
I woke up with my mouth full of dust and my head full of someone else’s memories. The first taste was of iron and rain from a dream where I had been more monster than girl. The second taste, when I finally opened my eyes for real, was instant regret and the cheap flavor of instant noodles. "My name is Kennedi," I said to myself. "Kennedi Duncan. Not a monster, not yet." "Kennedi!" someone hissed outside the door. "If you're still in there, hurry. We leave in five." I pushed the door...
I remember the winter like a wound that never healed. "The mountain trembled," I told them. "The sky opened its fist. Let it be a good year." "It is a sign," the ministers said. "A blessing for the realm." "I only asked one thing," I said to no one. "Only that she be well." "She will be well, Your Majesty," Constance said beside me, folding the child's small robe with trembling hands. "She will," I lied, because I had to keep some order in a palace that still needed an emperor's...
I found the ATM receipt inside a soap box. "I knew it," I said, my voice so small it barely filled the kitchen. "Found what?" Ross James looked up from his laptop like a man who had never been forced to finish anything on time. "The bank withdrawal. The ATM receipt—with our card number on it." I held the paper out like proof of some small miracle. He didn't take it. He didn't even blink. "We need to talk about this later." Later had been a soft promise for months in our house....
When I woke up in that life, I opened my eyes to a living room that smelled like old money and jasmine. I blinked and found a pearl necklace on the side table, a framed photo of my late husband, and a ten-year-old shadow perched at the foot of the couch. "Mom," she said, small and steady. "Don't be sad. When I grow up, I'll take care of you like Dad did." I laughed, then cried. "All right," I said. "From now on, I'm your real mom." My name is Marcella Bridges. I was thirty-five, wore...
"I am Jaylah Cherry," I said when they first asked my name in the East Court. "I am Canon David's wife." "You're his white moon," Canon David whispered, fingers warm around my hand. "You will be—" "I will be with you," I finished for him. "If you go, I go." "You won't resent me?" he asked once, the day before the throne was publicly sealed and Kadence Brown was named Empress. "I won't resent you," I answered with a smile that fixed the hurt somewhere below my ribs. "What you want, I...
I was in line to get a swab when I realized the volunteer man doing samples was my ex. He pushed the swab deep and steady. I bit the inside of my cheek and kept my eyes forward. "Too deep! Lighter, please," I whispered, because dignity still mattered even in a mask. The volunteer smiled in a way that used to be familiar. "Deep?" he drawled. He snapped the swab clean in the tube with a little flourish. He glanced at the handsome guy waiting behind me and cocked an eyebrow. "New...
"Kill her!" "I won't die for you," I said, and the sky answered. My hair burned like blood. My dress was the last red I owned. The air around the old palace gate shuddered as if it could not hold me and my choice at the same time. "You'll beg," someone shouted from the ranks. "I already begged," I told them. "That was enough." They were a sea of teeth and spears. They wanted the monster crowned by storybooks. They wanted the woman with the red dress and the white fox memory to be...
I didn't expect weddings to mean anything to me. "I do," Cedar Eaton said, sliding the ring toward my finger. "Wait—" The hall held its breath. My breath stuck halfway. The chapel doors burst open. "Dad!" a small voice cried. Cedar's hand froze. The ring stopped half on my knuckle. I saw him, the perfect groom, turn like someone had pulled a string. A woman stood in the doorway, immaculate, mascara dark as guilt. She held a small boy by the hand. His hair stuck up like he had...
"They hit me again." "I felt the heel sink into my ribs, heard a wet crack, and tasted dust." "Why are you doing this to me?" I spat, voice small and sharp. "Because you are the third daughter," Deborah Bass said with a grin that had killed more than smiles. "Because the house likes clean work." "They laughed," I told the empty courtyard. "They kicked me and called me trash. They took my food, my clothes, my name." "Stop whining," a tinny voice cut inside my head. "Binding...
I was twelve when the world changed outside our window and Miles started asking me questions he had never asked before. "Why are you sitting there like that?" he said, standing in my doorway, towel over his shoulders. I almost fell off the windowsill. He never spoke when he could avoid speaking. He was the sort who kept words for important things. So when he asked, "Are you thinking about not living anymore?" the towel on his head looked ridiculous and serious at once. I frowned and...
I remember the first time I drank too much and walked into his life like an unpaid debt. "You don't have to make this harder than it is," someone purred from the booth, voice lacquered sweet. The woman laughed like a bell and leaned close to a man whose face I already knew too well. "Who told you he'd be kind?" I said when I stepped through the door. "Elina?" A dozen heads turned at once. "Is that—" "Robert," I said, and the room quieted like a curtain falling. He rose as if...
I opened my eyes to birdsong and clouds that looked like cotton. For a second I thought I was still in the hospital, because I had just come out of surgery. I blinked. The air smelled of wood smoke and river mud. My head ached. I pushed myself up. My white coat was gone. Instead I wore a long dress with wide sleeves that nearly tripped me. My glasses were gone, too. I touched my nose. My sight was sharp, clearer than ever. I thought, I must be dreaming. A child’s scream cut the air. I ran...
I: "Father wants me to go in my sister’s place." "Do you mean—into the palace?" I asked, and heard the hope in my own voice before I could bury it in a sensible face. "Elliot says it will secure the house," my eldest sister Juliana had told me when she handed along the letter. "It could be a better life. Think of it—no more worrying over empty bowls." "I'll do it." I said it fast, the kind of quick promise the poor make to themselves and then work the rest of their life to prove...
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 locked the old key in my palm and tasted the metal like a private promise. "I always wondered if you'd ever laugh," Denver said softly. "Do you mean at me or with me?" I asked. He smiled like sunlight through glass. "With you." I had told myself for two years that cold was simpler. I had practiced the look that shut people out. I had learned to keep my life tidy, to collect rents, to count rooms like small victories. "Landlord" was a comfortable dream: buy one apartment, then...
"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...
