Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I have woken up in other people's beds more times than I can count. "Sleep," Valentin Archer said the very first thing to me the first time he found me in that place where the moonlight never seemed to reach. "Sleep," he said every night after. "Sleep," he said like a prayer, like a command, like a lullaby that would bend my life into quiet curves until it broke. I don't like being told what to do. I especially don't like being told to sleep when I'm wide awake. "Sleep," he told me...
I remember the nurse’s voice like a radio backscatter: soft, worried, rehearsed. “Miss Mikhaylov, are you sure you want to leave? You’re only in the middle stage. There’s still a chance—” “Thanks. It’s my choice.” I slid the discharge papers across the counter with hands that didn’t tremble as much as I thought they would. The room smelled like antiseptic and old magazines. The word cancer had space-rented room in my chest, but I’d made room for other things too: a small, stubborn plan, and...
I woke up in a bridal chamber and could not remember two whole years. "You're awake," my maid said, voice trembling. "Master Elliott asked me to bring your tea." I sat very still, the silk at my wrists cold and unfamiliar. "What day is it?" I asked, my voice small. "Fifteenth day of the tenth month, madam," she whispered. "You were wed two weeks ago." Two weeks ago? I had sleep in a storm and a jolt—three days ago I thought I had woken, but this said two years. I clutched the screen...
I woke up gasping, my hand pressed hard to the place my dream had been stabbed. "You're okay," I told myself out loud, but my voice shook. The silk nightgown clung to me. The room around me was quiet. The dream had been too real—too sharp. I could still feel a blade, the wet sting, the smell of iron. My phone chimed. I looked at the screen. A string of symbols I knew by heart blinked bright. "Eleven, someone found who you asked for," the voice said when I answered. "Good," I...
I was born into a house that fit too many people into too few square meters and too many dreams into too little time. My name is Mariah Blanc. I learned early that smallness can be ordinary and stubborn all at once: my skin was sallow, I stood a little shorter than most girls, I laughed with my whole mouth and showed the back teeth everyone pretended not to notice. And yet I had a hunger that made me put my palms to the sky and ask to be someone who could stand beneath a light and pretend to be...
"Don't leave me," he whispered once, in a courtyard of fireflies. "Please do not leave me." I remember saying it back to him in a different voice the night everything broke. "I give up on you." "Again: confirm, host, are you abandoning the book world?" The system's voice was flat. I lifted the sword and pressed it to my throat. Blood ran warm and thick. Liam Hudson watched, a look on his face that had always been a promise and a threat. I smiled the only smile I had left. "This...
"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...
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 never expected a normal late night at the office to change everything. "It looked like you were trying to seduce me," Brooks Alvarez said, leaning too close across my desk. "Deliberately staying late, dressing like that—what are you up to, Abby?" "Brooks, you're being ridiculous. Stop it," I answered, my voice high and shaky. "If you don't stop touching me, I'll call security." "Oh? Call them," he sneered. "You know, Abby, I've noticed you since day one. Fresh grad, saving every...
"I'll sing it. Right here. Right now." The words left my throat like a confession. My knees were raw from the pavement. The city lights blurred into halos and people’s faces were just dark shapes and flashes of phone screens. Logan Picard stood under the club canopy, a shadow inside a shadow, watching me as if I were an animal he had trained. "You will sing it," he said. "And you will beg for mercy while you sing." "Logan..." My voice cracked. "Please." He smiled like the verdict...
I did not mean to. I really didn't. "Were we—" I choked on the question as the memory of a night of bad decisions fluttered like broken tissue in my brain. Frost Blackwell looked at me with the same cool, unreadable face he'd worn for six years at the office. He was my boss. He was always frost. He was never anything else. He answered, calm as a ledger: "What, Anastasia? Are you not going to take responsibility?" I felt my throat close. "I—" I stopped. The words in my mouth sounded...
I woke up tasting river mud and other people's memories. I should have been drowning, but someone or something had dragged me out like a fish. I lay on the cold sand and kept my eyes shut, pretending to be dead. Pretending would buy time. A middle-aged man in a coat of small men and a voice like a bell leaned over me. He called me “miss” and told the bearers to carry me. They lifted me like I was light as a shawl and dumped me into a sedan. I smelled lacquer and tea, and I realized I was...
I remember the bowl—the thin porcelain that trembled in my hands. I remember the cold in the hall and the soldiers pushing people forward like they were sheep. I remember Azariah Gardner handing me the bowl and the number floating over his head: 80. "Pour it all down," he said, voice as flat as river ice. I looked at him. "You're sure?" I asked. He shrugged, unreadable. "The order came from the throne. Drink." I lifted the bowl to my lips. I could see numbers over everyone: some...
I woke to the sound of crying that had no business being mine to hear. "Why are you still crying?" someone wailed. "Who taught you to make such a noise?" "Quiet! Quiet!" an officious voice snapped, and the wailing turned into ritual laments — the practiced, mechanical grief that everybody in court had learned to show when the occasion demanded it. I opened my eyes and I was not in my bed. I was floating above my own life, or what remained of it. The room was a black-and-white hall of...
"I want this city to breathe again," she shouted, then ripped open her shirt. I froze on the leather chair and watched petals fly like an accident. Security moved like a blade. My assistant Eamon Reid looked at me, eyes wide, and mouthed, "What do we do?" "Let her," I said. Eamon didn't let her. He lunged forward and the scene became a bad movie: men in suits, a white mask on a young woman, a banner that said STOP THE FACTORY in felt-tip strokes, and a handmade knife flashing in her...
I wake to someone breathing against my neck. "Don't go," he mumbles. I stare at the ceiling, at the green canopy, and the breath on my skin turns my anger into a cold, humming panic. I roll, push, shout—"Let go!"—but the arms around me only press tighter. "Stop." My teeth find his forearm and I bite. He cries out, a small wounded sound that makes my whole body freeze. "Mother—" he breathes in my neck, and the single syllable collapses me from fury into a hollow I didn't know I...
I found the secret the night I was supposed to be on a business trip. "I swear I packed everything you asked for," Franklin said, grinning like we shared a private joke. "Just get me to the hotel," I said. My voice sounded small in the hotel lobby. My suitcase hit the floor with a polite thud. Franklin pretended not to notice how my hands shook. He'd been sent by Josiah to pick me up—"a favor between friends," he called it. At the welcome dinner his words slipped out like a loose...
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...
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 woke to my brother’s voice cutting through the thin morning light. "Florence, get up. Your third brother will be back soon." "Okay," I said, folding the blanket over my knees and looking at the small room that was both mine and not mine. The Florence who had laughed in the city and the Florence who now breathed straw dust were the same name and two different lives. I had arrived here a year ago, with a space that no one could see and with things I hardly used—until I needed them. I...
