Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 was fifteen the year they brought me through the palace gate. "My daughter must be careful," my mother had whispered as they braided my hair. "Speech is a blade in a strange court. Do not wave it." "You will not starve," my father had said, forcing a brave face. "This is safer than the markets." I had not wanted glory. I had wanted a small life: a courtyard where beans could be planted, a dog at my feet, the smell of stew in the evening. I got a courtyard, a small dog, and...
I woke to a voice as sharp as broken glass. “You’re seven months pregnant and you don’t even know?” My brain felt like it had been struck by lightning. Pregnant? Me? With my body that doctors had told me was infertile? The odds had been a joke in my head until the paper on the desk told a different truth. The clinic door burst open. People flooded in. “My daughter is carrying someone else’s child? Get an abortion now!” my father barked, his palm slapping the table with the force of...
I remember the year my father first stayed out all night like a different person. I remember the way the bathroom light cast a thin slice across the apartment hallway at two in the morning, and how my mother would sit at the vanity with hands that trembled and tell me things in a voice that sounded smaller than it used to. "Jenna," she said that night, "your grandparents—your grandfather—he said if it's another girl, it's a shame." "I know," I whispered. "Don't tell your father I said...
"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 remember the cold before I remembered my name. "They said the hour was right," the herald shouted into the winter dark. "Bring the bride into the manor!" I had been chained in the cold cell for more than a year. They dragged me out because today a husband would be crowned—only I was not the bride. "They brought her out," someone called, and a dozen bright-robed cultivators flooded the courtyard like teeth. A white-clad man shoved a sword against my throat and barked, "Take 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,...
"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 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 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 woke up gasping, the river cold in my lungs, the taste of mud and iron still clinging to my teeth. I sat bolt upright in a bed I did not recognize, my body light as if the bruises and broken bones had never happened. "Child—my child?" I called out without thinking. A pale canopy, sunlight through gauze, a stranger's back framed in the doorway. He turned, and something in me leapt—familiar as a scar. "You are awake." His voice was low, edged with an easy calm that made my chest both...
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 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 remember the night the house held its breath for me. "Beatrice," Kaydence hissed, straightening the veil at my throat. "They're all eyes and coins out there. Breathe." "I am breathing," I said, and my voice surprised me by being steady. "Just tell me when the music starts." Outside, the Phoenix Hall swelled with sound—laughs, clinking cups, the hungry chatter of men who paid for beauty and believed themselves civilized. On that night of the Hundred Gifts, every magistrate, every...
"I saw him on the news." "The new CEO? In town already?" "I can't believe it. Bowen Warren came back." When the plaza screen showed his silhouette, the crowd lilted with the kind of curiosity reserved for storms. He was taller than I'd remembered, a gray suit cut like it belonged to a sculptor's measurements. I turned my face away. "I thought you weren't watching," Harper said, nudging me. "I'm not," I lied. "I'm—I'm fine." Harper Bauer's thumb tapped a rhythm on my palm...
"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 woke to spring rain on the lattice and a sameness of light that smelled of old paper and plum wine. I sat up against the carved headboard and stared at the painting on the wall until the scene stitched itself: me, small and spared, given a second turn at everything I’d lost. “Helen,” Hannah called through the bead curtain, “guests at grandmother’s hall! Why are you hiding when there’s tea and gossip to be had?” “I—” I smoothed my skirt. My voice sounded small. Hannah flung the...
I was only supposed to babysit a pet. "You sure you can handle him?" Grey asked before he left, looking at me like I was about to babysit a thousand-dollar watch. "I can," I lied. "He reads. He drinks coffee. He has a daily feeding schedule with six meals and a face mask every other day." Grey handed me a thick notebook that looked like a thesis. "And his IQ is like a nine-year-old. So whatever you see is normal." "Okay," I said, but my mouth went dry when I saw the title: HEDGEHOG...
I still remember the voice the first time he asked me out like a dare. "Will you come with me?" Cruz asked, the rasp of his voice lazy and amused. People laughed behind him. "Qi—" someone started. "Cut it out," Louis Serra called, grinning. He pushed at Cruz's shoulder, and the joke turned into a dare and the dare landed on me. "I'll go." I said it before my heart could tell me not to, and the room slipped sideways into something warm and dangerous. Cruz smoked as he...
