Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I still remember the day Donovan asked me to “get engaged.” "I thought it would be funny," he said, his voice flat, like he was reading a text message out loud. "Funny?" I touched the cold silver ring he slid onto my finger that night. "This is a joke?" He laughed. "It was a prize, Chiyo. I thought we'd laugh about it later." "I don't want a joke," I said. "There you go being dramatic again," Donovan shrugged. "Girls have to be more coy. You can't be the one to say these...
I opened my eyes to pain and a cheap spring mattress and a ceiling fan that smelled like a summer afternoon from ten years ago. I blinked and the world slid into place: the sticky heat, the smell of instant coffee from the kitchen, the faded poster of a biology olympiad pinned crooked on the wall. I touched my temples. The scars weren't there. The memory of metal bent around metal, glass blooming red—gone. "Patricia? You okay?" My father sounded younger. His voice carried the soft, tired...
I liked to think I knew how to read people. I had worked five years in administration in Beijing, handled office politics and paperwork, and believed I could tell truth from charm. I thought I married a man who believed in logic and fairness. His name was Alexander Cannon, and I loved him. I loved how he listened, how he consulted me when he bought small things, how he joked with me in that soft, earnest way. I called him my reasoning partner, my little philosopher. But one month after our...
"I hit send," I say, and my hands keep shaking. "I knew you would," Kori says on the other end of the line, laughing too loud. "You always do." "I don't feel like laughing," I whisper. "Then don't. Just do it." I press the final message, then close my phone. The screen goes black. The hotel room is quiet except for the air conditioner. I pull the blanket up to my chin and remember how it started — a keyboard, a tired voice, a promise to listen. "Why did you leave your window...
I first noticed him the day I almost fell into the courtyard fountain. "Hold on—don't let go," a voice said, flat and steady. A pair of hands closed around my wrists. I looked up and the world rearranged: sharp jawline, clear eyes, a wind that smelled faintly of cold lemon. He didn't smile. He simply steadied me. "Thanks," I said. "No problem," he answered, and then turned away as if it had been nothing. They all called him Denver Fontaine. I should have known then that a quiet...
I remember the taste of another life like a bruise. Warm milk, a woman’s laugh, a sudden flood of strange memories that didn’t belong to me. I was four and furious at everything. I was also, as the household liked to remind me, Emma Oliver—the little princess who ought to drink five times a day and smile like a painted porcelain bird. "Stop fussing, baby," Mae Richardson said, trying to smile as she wiped my chin. "Milk now." "No," I said. I was small but stubborn. "Not...
"I pulled her up and my hands went cold." "I need the phone," a villager said. "Give it back," I said, but they took it and walked away. I stood with a wet sleeve in my hands and a dead girl's hair in my palm. Her red jacket stuck to her like a flag. Her face was swollen white and blue. Her legs were bare. The water had carried her toward me, and she had come against the current, moving like someone walking back toward life. "She's one of ours?" someone asked. "No." I didn't...
"I'll pour you tea," I hiss, and the cup hits Jules's hand before anyone can blink. "Ow!" Jules Kuenz screams, the porcelain shattering on the floor. Her silk sleeve smokes where the scald touched it. "You shouldn't have mocked me," I say, voice light like a child's, but my eyes are steady. "Do you remember the last time someone laughed at me?" She glares. Zachary Yamada, the Crown Prince, shifts in his seat and leans forward with that slow hunger in his face. Isaac Chambers, my new...
"Get up." I dropped the script and the room went quiet. "Are you okay?" Monica asked. Her voice shook more than mine did. "No," I said. "I'm not okay." I still remember the smell of the studio that night—cold air, dust, cheap coffee. I remember Chandler's laugh, the way his eyes had sharpened when they landed on me. I remember the kiss that wasn't a kiss and the price he put on my silence. "You shouldn't have worn that dress," he had told me once, as if he owned the meaning of my...
My name is Adelaide Carey. I say it aloud sometimes just to remember who I am, though people long ago started calling me other things. "Second concubine," they said. "The general's mistress," they whispered. "An heiress reduced," the newspapers sneered. "Adelaide," I say it again now, to remind myself that once upon a different life, I had a name written in my father's careful hand. "You look like a child," my brother would say when he felt generous. "Come, sit." "Stop fussing," my mother...
I am Aviana. I have been the emperor's personal maid since I was ten and he was seven. I am the one who knew him when his voice still cracked and his hands were small. I am the one who learned to bend like reed in wind so the crown would not break. I have served Clement Armstrong for fifteen years. "Your hand is bleeding," I said the night he killed again. Clement did not answer. He dropped the long blade and walked to the basin I held, and plunged his pale, long fingers into the cold...
I remember the smell of the anniversary candle: sweet and a little smoky, like the end of something I thought would last forever. "You smell like a bar," I said when he came in. "Long day," Wyatt Daniel answered. "They dragged me into an inspection meeting. I'm sorry I missed dinner. I'll make it up to you." "Tomorrow," I said flatly. "We agreed." He kissed my forehead like he always did, soft and automatic. His hands were warm. His voice was steady. It was the kind of sorry that...
I woke to the taste of iron and the pain of someone having tried to break me into pieces. "Can you hear me?" a voice asked. It was thin and panicked, like the sound of someone trying to hide a sob. "Yes." My throat felt raw. "Where—?" "Stairs. Near the third floor landing. You were dragged down. It's a mess." The voice belonged to a boy I recognized by the tone of his fear: Julian Guerrero. I pushed my eyes open. The lights had long since failed; the stairwell smelled of something...
I carried him through the snow. "It is heavy." I said nothing else, because the city had already turned its face. Snow fell in deep, soft sheets and hid my footprints as if it would hide the world’s opinion of us both. "Do not let go," I told the corpse, though I did not know if he could hear. My fingers had stopped feeling because the cold wanted everything and gave nothing back. They said the snow was a good omen. "A good harvest," the town criers shouted on the warm days before the...
I never thought a single blank exam paper could change everything. I folded mine with casual amusement and handed it in like it was a dare. I thought my father's money would always be a parachute. I thought I could play with fate. "Got you a taxi, Kynlee," the driver said as I closed the test center door. "No, thanks," I told him, and I walked out into a life I had never learned to live. The first night outside my family's house, I discovered the small mercies I'd always ignored. I...
I remember the morning the whole market fell silent because someone shouted, “The little tyrant is coming.” I remember how people scattered like leaves and how one old man shuffled along, shaking his head like a bell. I remember thinking, in a soldier’s way, that a city that panicked at a rumor had worse enemies than any border tribe. I remember then that I was the one they whispered about. “My name is Fisher Owens,” I said one day to myself in the glassed mirror of my room, and the name...
I never expected rescuing a stray could change my whole life. "It bit me," I said into the dark, rubbing the hand that still stung. "It was supposed to be a dog." "It wasn't a dog," the voice above me said, amused and dangerous. "And you are certainly not allowed to do that." I blinked awake to a face too pretty for midnight and a hand that felt like an accusation. The man—no, the creature—had hair that caught the moon and eyes sharp as almond pits. He sat on my couch like he owned the...
I have been Ivan Bentley's assistant for five years. "No," I told myself every morning when my alarm went off, "this is a job." I told everyone that too. "What time is the client dinner tonight?" Ivan asked while flipping through his emails. "Seven," I answered, placing the last folder on his desk. "I'll be there with the materials." "You're coming," he said without looking up. "I can't. I'm booked," I said. He glanced at me like I had offered him a sin. "You always are." I laughed...
I woke to the sound of my daughter’s small hand patting my cheek. Her breath smelled of milk and the quiet of early morning. Jaelynn curled against my ribs like a warm secret. “Mom?” she whispered. “Shh. Mommy’s here,” I said. A year earlier, the sound of that hand could have been a trap. A year earlier, I learned that a single whisper—“Be careful”—could make a man turn red with rage. Now the whisper was a small comfort. It was the sound that had saved me. “Did you sleep?” she...
I woke to a voice that crawled under my skin. "What's wrong? You still want to play with the idea?" he said, low and rough. The sound of it hit me harder than a slap. I froze. The name that rose in my throat felt like a rusted key turning: Hudson Daniels. I remembered the night. I remembered everything down to the ache in my bones. I remembered the way it ended last time. I remembered the promise that never got kept. My heart lurched. I had been given a second chance. I had been...
