Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I smelled it first. "It smells like someone has been smoking," I said without looking up from the sink where a serum bead had slipped from my fingers. "Restaurant smokers, can you believe it? They don't care," Trey Roussel said from the hallway. He walked past the bathroom then into the bedroom; I heard the shower door slide. I didn't answer. I kept applying the serum, slow and careful, as if following a ritual might delay what I already suspected. Later, he came back into the...
I opened my eyes to straw, low beams, and the smell of smoke and old grain. "Where am I?" I whispered. Someone laughed softly. "You're home, Cataleya," said my mother. No. I corrected myself in silence. I am Cataleya Suzuki — back from a life I'd earned with blood and orders, and yet my name on the lintel read wrong. I felt the room like a borrowed uniform that didn't fit. Stale air, a warped roof, the faint iron taste of river mud. My head throbbed with the memory of water...
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'll go," I said, and I pushed my chair back. "Are you sure?" my mother asked. Her fingers trembled on the silk curtain. The room smelled of incense and regret. "Yes," I said. "I'll go." "Don't blame me, honey. Your sister—" Raffaella Brantley fumbled. "She can't take care of him. His eyes... his leg—" "Enough." I cut her off. "Answer me. Did you choose this? Did you pick me?" She looked like a woman who had practiced every excuse in the mirror. Finally she nodded, like a...
I opened the café door with a bell that always chimed like a small surprise. The scent of fresh coffee, old paper, and cedar wrapped me like a familiar shawl. My cat—white as a porcelain cup—stretched on the green cupboard and blinked up at me with the same slow kindness it had shown me since it chose this place. “Good morning, Bebe,” I murmured, setting the bundle of roses on the counter. The jukebox in the corner was playing an old record, the kind of song that made dust motes look like...
I first stopped loving him on the tenth anniversary of my being born into someone else’s story. "I cooked your favorite beef-and-chili pot," I typed, then deleted it. "You're not coming back this month," his message had said a week ago. I sat in the small kitchen with a bubbling pot that smelled like a promise and a lie both. The dumplings had cooled into greasy lumps that made my stomach churn. I flipped the light on, found the white floral dress I’d worn the night we met, smoothed...
"I can't believe he's actually coming back," I said, tapping my nail against the arm of the leather sofa. "Elisabetta, you're asking that like it's a surprise invite," Jules said from the phone, breathless with her usual flair. "You always melt when Sebastian walks into a room." "Don't call him Sebastian like he's a dessert," I snapped, smoothing my skirt. "I only call him that because you refuse to call him a simple name," Jules laughed. "Anyway, tell me — are you ready to receive...
I walked out of the police station like someone had pinned a sour note to my chest. "Next time, don't kidnap children," Director Ambrosio Leone told me with a stare like a cooling iron. "Kidnap? Me?" I wanted to spit back a dozen clever insults, but Director Leone slid a paper across the desk before I could open my mouth. "I signed nothing," I said. "Who gave you permission to make me sign?" "An agreement with the Spirit Affairs Bureau," he answered. "You must obey certain...
I wake up with my heart tattooed by a nightmare. "I saw him again," I whisper to the dark, and the room answers with the patter of rain against the window. The old locust tree outside our villa stands like a silent witness. My palms go slick. I splash cold water on my face until the world glitches back into shape. "Everlee," a voice outside says. It's Dustin Deng, my doctor and my constant shadow. He always knocks, never barges in. His footsteps are careful like he fears breaking...
"I got in trouble for dating?" I said, head bowed as the old man waved the ruler like it weighed nothing. "Yes, Kendall Perry, early romance in our school—unbecoming," Erick Daniels said, voice rough with routine. "You are in the gifted class now slipping to the bottom. Explain yourself." I kept my eyes low. I had done this before—ten years' worth of an old wound—and my mouth tasted like rust. The memory of the day my parents left me because I had shouted at them, the memory of the call...
I. They handed me a menu at the coffee shop and I almost missed his face. "He never smiles," Juliana warned me on the phone. "He keeps to himself." "I like mysterious," I said. He did not smile that day. He answered ten questions with one word and only ever used "hm," "oh," or "ah." He looked like a statue carved from moonlight—cold, silent, impossible. When he gave me one of those single-word replies, I felt like I had been given a secret. "You're not going to be late for the...
1 Pain split me awake like glass breaking. I sat upright and the world swam—then steadied into the two familiar faces I had not seen alive for two years. "Valeria, are you all right?" my mother said, fingers gentle on my shoulder. I blinked. Nobody had called me that name in years. My heart dropped and then jumped. "Mom?" My throat was raw. "Where—where are we?" My father, Jasper Sherman, leaned forward with the same soft worry he'd always worn. "Bad dream?" I reached for him,...
“You crawled into my bed and still thought of another man?” He spat the words like venom as he pushed me down. I tasted dirt and shame. I had been traded like a coin, first handed to a penniless scholar who rose to power, then sold to this noble as cover for someone else’s rise. “You promised my father safety,” I said through a broken throat. “You promised him freedom.” “Get out,” the noble snapped. “Don’t make me vomit.” I stood and bowed because my hands were empty and the only...
"I won't beg you." "Then die," Ambrose said, and stepped back. I slid. Air rushed past my ears. My hands slapped stone. I clawed at the cliff as if the cliff was a friend who had kept its hand out. Ambrose watched with a smile that tasted like metal. "You're ugly. Fat. A joke," he said like he was reading a long-worn script. My left hand slipped. "I love you," I gasped, because some part of the old me—the one who fed on small kindnesses and lies—still wanted the lie to be true....
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,...
I remember the wind chime the way a scar remembers a touch. "Why are you crying now?" Fisher asked, leaning over me like a storm about to break. I kept my chin down, watching the silver little bells sway in the window. Their sound was thin, like a laugh from far away. Each tinkle felt like the shape of my life, knocked hollow. "You said my name," I said, but I didn't look at him. He bent lower, his breath warm on my shoulder. "Esperanza," he murmured. "Tell me." My nails drew...
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 found out Mark got married when I was scrolling through my phone on a rainy Monday and saw a photo of a red marriage certificate in his social feed. "You're kidding," I told Kenzie, my voice too loud for the tiny rented living room. "He posted it." "Post what?" Kenzie asked, already half laughing, half furious. "The one that says he and Megan are married." "Which of course he would do," Kenzie said. "Show off." "I still can't believe he did it two weeks after we signed the...
I woke up to a hand at my throat and a voice that sounded like winter iron. "Cry all you want," he said quietly. "It won't help." I gasped and closed my eyes. The hand was real. The fear was real. The memory that had stolen my last life slammed into me — the face of the man who betrayed me, the blood, the empty bed where my baby should have been. "Who—" I couldn't finish. He lifted me as if I weighed nothing and set me down on the bed. His face was close. His eyes were deep wells of...
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...
