Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
1977 summer had the smell of hot tar and boiled corn. I opened my eyes to a court yard buzzing with voices that wanted me dead or wanted me owned; they were not the same thing here, and both hurt. “Get away from her!” a man snarled—no, that was not how it began. The loud voice came like a hammer blow, rough and greedy. “You old witch, step aside!” another voice jeered. I blinked. Dirt in the mouth, the taste of pond water still in my teeth. I forced myself up and saw a hulking man...
"Did you know?" Margherita said from the doorway, the sarcasm so soft it sounded like a knife. "Know what?" I tried not to let my pen tremble. My fingers were wet with sweat even though the exam hall was full of air. "About the math problem?" "No." She stepped closer. "That Dad and Mom—actually, your real parents—are coming tomorrow." I didn't look up. "I heard." She laughed in the kind of way that had always made me small. "Of course you did. They called. They're so rich. They have...
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...
“Move!” I slammed my palm on the steering wheel and the engine growled like it agreed. I breathed slow. The highway was thin, the sky still cold. A flatbed ahead had a blown tire. I climbed down, thumbed the spare, and fixed it. A horn sounded. A man in a red cab leaned out and shouted, “Hi, beautiful. Need help?” I raised my cap brim. “No thanks.” I tightened the last lug and wiped grease on my jeans. He laughed and wrote his number on a bottle, tossed it at my lap like a toy. I...
"I finished the last scene," I said, and the set went quiet in the way it always does when something important ends. "Claudia," Sterling called from the doorway, "take a bow. You were perfect." I smiled and turned. "Congrats to you too, Sterling. We made it." He laughed, close enough that his scent — coffee and late-night scripts — brushed my face. "Picture?" "Picture," I echoed, and we took a handful. He posted one to his feed first, cheeky as always. "Wrapped shooting with my...
I still remember the exact sound my phone made when it slid off the carpet and hit the floor. "Tap," it landed face down, screen black, like the moment someone closes a book on you. "You okay?" Jaxon asked from the doorway. "I'm fine," I said, but my voice was a thin thing. "I'm fine." "You don't look fine," he said, coming closer and squatting so his face was level with mine. "Tell me what happened." "I don't want—" I swallowed. "I can't say it out loud yet." "Say 'I can't...
I was sixty and I had learned to like the quiet. "Mom," my daughter Christina called, "we're here. Happy birthday." "I know," I said, and I meant it. I knew everything worth knowing about small kindnesses. I knew how a cup of tea could be a whole afternoon. I knew how a child’s warm head on my knee could make the world make sense again. "Tell me a story, Grandma," Chie begged, climbing into my lap and looking up with the kind of bright, unguarded face children get before the world...
I was supposed to be the proud daughter of a great family—Estrella Larsson, the eldest granddaughter of a chancellor, raised to be admired and married for honor. Instead I became the second household’s shadow: a side consort in the East Palace, expected to keep my head bowed and my mouth closed. "I don't understand why you look like that," Hailey said one afternoon, swatting at a pear. She was my brightest friend in the East Palace—Hailey Kozlov—who loved everything with a reckless, open...
I still remember the news crawling across the hotel lobby television when I first heard it: "New starlet Eva Bacon photographed entering a suite with a prominent businessman. Rumors fly." I watched the scrolling text, then switched the set off. No one suspected the woman on the screen would be my husband's new headline, and no one knew how carefully I was scripting my own exit. "My wife is making dinner tonight," I told the housekeeper, and she smiled in a way that sounded like applause....
I opened my eyes and the world smelled like old paper and cold broth. "I found him on the street," I said before my voice could betray me, and the first person I said it to was the boy whose fingers trembled in mine. "Thank you." He had no sound to say it aloud. He wrote the two characters with a trembling hand and handed the tiny paper to me like a sacred offering. It was the first thing I ever heard from him: the word hung in my chest. He had a thin film over both eyes. He couldn't...
"I can't breathe," I said into the phone, though the wind did most of the screaming for me. "Dillon, there are flights—" I forced the word out. "You stay. I have to sort things here. Wait for me," Dillon Mercier said, calm and small over the line. I watched the skyline of Reykjavik blur into a smear through the balcony glass. The aurora would come tonight, a promise I'd kept to myself for ten years. Dillon had promised to be there. He didn't take the next flight. He did not keep his...
I woke up to a loud, boyish voice next to my ear. "Big sister, wake up. We have guests." I held my head like it weighed a ton. My brain felt fuzzy, like someone had left lights on all night. "You— why are you in my bed?" I croaked. "You married me yesterday," he said simply. His eyes were bright and clear as a new day. I sat up and saw two marriage certificates on the bedside table. I flopped back to my pillow and blinked at the ceiling. If I hadn't been dizzy enough to nearly...
I opened my eyes to dust and a dry, cracked smell like old bones and summer gone wrong. "She's awake!" a rough voice called. "Give her water, some food, then leave," another voice answered. For a second I thought I was back in the van with the team. Then my stomach knotted, memory like a broken dam poured in, and I realized I was not in any van. "Where am I? Did my dog open a door again?" I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. "Woof!" A familiar bark answered—not outside,...
"System bound. Spatial jump complete." "Memory synced. Live stream online. Host, watch the comments and interact." The dizzy spin was still in my head when I opened my eyes. The courtyard light hit my face and then I closed my eyes again, forcing the world to steady. "You're useless, Kassidy. Stop playing weak—both the Crown Prince and your cousin have seen through you. You're just a willful temptress!" A slim girl in pink stood by the handsome man everyone called the Prince. Her voice...
I pushed the door open and felt for light with the back of my hand. "It's dark," I said, listening. "Jocelyn? You here?" No answer. The suite smelled like perfume and something else I couldn't name. My foot hit soft fabric and I nearly fell. "Who—" I started. A heavy hand closed around my ankle, hot and hard. I screamed. Men moved in the dark like predators. Somebody hissed, "I can give you whatever you want." I kicked. I bit. I tasted metal, heard a grunt, and then I ran. I...
I remember the first time I decided to be cruel on purpose. The snow had not yet thawed and a hostage-prince knelt, pale and shivering like a statue that had been carved from ice. His lips trembled, a vein at his temple pulsing slow and red. He looked up at me as if he still believed mercy might be an option. "Your Highness, I was wrong," he said, voice barely a rasp. "I know I was wrong." I told a slave, "Beat him. Do it until you think he will die." They did not refuse. They always...
I watched my own life get unpacked like a suitcase I could no longer close. The sofa we bought together had my faint coffee stain on the arm. The game console I gave him sat on the shelf, its little LED breathing softly. The bag of celery dumplings I had wrapped and frozen the night before his birthday hummed in the freezer. Their smell belonged to me. Their shape was my quiet proof that I had tried, again and again, to make a nest where the two of us could survive. Then they sat on that...
"I cut meat for a living," I said, and the knife in my hand flashed like a promise. "I do not belong in a house of silk." "You fuss like you do," my father said, spitting pork fat on his thumb. "But you can act the part for a day." "I won't be a bird in a gilded cage," I told him. "You will do as you're told," Finch Choi warned, and he did not bother to hide the way his voice shook. "You will go to Cooper Carr's house. They'll call you their daughter and you will wait. One year. Do the...
I still remember how embarrassed I felt the moment my ball ricocheted and found him. "Are you okay?" I asked, voice small. He crouched on the asphalt, hands clamped to his groin, and there was a sound in his throat that made the world tilt for a second. "It's... probably ruined," he said, quiet as if admitting defeat. "Ruined?" I echoed, and my stomach dropped. "You mean—" He didn't finish. He stayed hunched over like that while the afternoon heat soaked through my tee shirt and...
"I promised you ice cream after the exams," I said to myself like a spell as I walked into the supermarket with Drew. Drew Peters—my older brother—was carrying himself like the king of thrift today, a lollipop stuck in the corner of his mouth, as if that would hide the fact he was counting his coins with his eyes. "Take whatever you like," he said, more loudly than necessary. "Really?" I answered, already running down the frozen aisle. Drew rolled his eyes. "Don't go for the fancy...
