Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 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 first time Mom brought him home." "Who?" I said. "The boy," Everly said, like she was telling me about a stray dog she had decided to keep. "He was four. Dirty. Wouldn't let anyone touch his backpack." "Why would she bring a child home?" I asked, even though I already knew how Everly's heart worked. "Because he had nowhere," she said. "And because... I couldn't leave him." He sat on our old couch like a quiet piece of furniture for weeks. He didn't answer our...
I kicked the little bundle of fur off the edge of the bed and glared at the man grinning at me. "Why foxes?" I asked, pointing at the wriggling litter. "Because you're a little fox," he said, still smiling, like the joke landed perfectly. I grabbed a paper talisman from his desk and slapped it at his face. "I know you're a daoist. But why did we have—why did we give birth to—pure-blood fox kits?" He tightened his hold on my hand and pulled me close. He breathed in my ear and said...
I remember the first time I saw him there was light in the room and he looked like he belonged to the light. I didn't know then his name would wrap around three years of my life. I didn't know then that small, ordinary moments would either build a home or reveal a hollow. I tell this like a map I followed and unfollowed, so every turn you read is the exact one I took. 1 "It's Paolo's friend," my brother had said months before I'd ever speak to him. "He's coming over?" I asked,...
I coughed, water pouring from my mouth, and spat into the grass. "She's alive!" someone shouted. I blinked, throat burning, and tasted mud and fear. A ring of rough, angry faces leaned over me. A thin woman with a hard mouth jabbed a finger under my chin like a spear. "You little witch," she said. "You nearly drowned at my nephew's house. Who did you sleep with? Speak!" I felt hands on me. My head was thick as if filled with cotton. I tried to stand and my body felt borrowed, wrong....
I was twelve the first spring I learned how to steal fish from a river and make the world listen. "Look," I told the sun on my face and the buzzing flies, "we're making dinner." "I am recording," a small mechanical voice answered from nowhere and everywhere at once. It sounded like a tin ladle clinking, and I pretended to be very surprised even though I'd been pretending all morning. "What did you find?" I asked the tin-ladle voice, which for reasons I could not explain I had named in...
"I wake up to a man's hand on my throat." I flinch and twist. The room smells of cheap cologne and stale wine. A light is in my eyes. Flash cameras blink like a swarm of flies. "Pull the camera in! The sponsor wants his money's worth!" someone shouts. "I told you, he's old. Get his face," another voice laughs. I throw my foot. The old man's hand slips. I grab his wrist and snap it. "Ah!" He screams like an animal. "What's happening?" a photographer cries. "Security!" They...
A shaft of sunlight woke me. I blinked, then froze. "Why does my voice sound...different?" I whispered, and the sound made me jump—low, rough, unmistakably a man's voice. "Brother, are you okay?" a small voice outside the door asked. "Tova, go get your shoes on. I'm fine," I answered as calmly as a stranger-living-in-my-throat could. "Brother?" she repeated and then the door clicked shut. I forced myself out of bed and slammed into the doorframe. Pain blossomed on my forehead. My...
I remember the smell of spring when I woke up in this body—damp earth, cut grass, and upstairs, the faint smoke of someone boiling tea. I remember the hill, the narrow stone path down to the fields, and the way children laughed as farmers bent their backs to seed and hoe. "I'm Iris," I said aloud to the wind, like a child claiming a toy. "Iris Koehler, from the city a hundred lives ago. Don't you dare make me a fool." "Who told you that name?" my mother said, when she heard me practicing....
I woke to the sound of a distant, animal-like cry and smelled old blood and dust. I was holding someone I hated and loved and could not name with any single word—Francisco Brandt. My body ached in places I couldn't explain. My back felt raw. My head buzzed with images like a broken projector. "Stay with me," Francisco said, and his voice was a surprise—ragged, real. "Don't close your eyes." "I—" I tried to breathe and failed. "What happened?" The world I remembered had been shredded...
I am Evelyn Browning. I was called "Number Eleven" before I learned my name. I remember a cold bed, wires taped to my small arms, lights that smelled like batteries, and a man who called himself Professor Denis. "Number Eleven," he said into a recorder, "age five years, six months, nine days." "Mind control test: SSS," another voice read out. "Physical: SSS," a woman added. "Memory: SS," someone else murmured. "Pain threshold: zero…" Professor Denis trailed off as he watched me...
I woke up to a lighter than usual silence and the smell of cold air slipping under the bedroom door. I thought Greyson was asleep beside me, the small rhythm of his breathing steady and familiar. I planned to surprise him, to creep out and flick the light, to see him grumble and then smile. Instead I heard a lighter click, a low voice through the thin wood of the door, and a sentence that folded me in half. "I know Elena's coming back in March," he said into the phone. "She told me...
I remember the exam hall like a stage with one spotlight. I left later on purpose. "How was it?" my father thundered when he saw me. "Clear—Peking and Tsinghua, right? We'll celebrate!" Cyrus Soto beamed like he owned the sun. I looked back at my mother, Daphne English. Her face had gone cold-green. Yelena Smith and her children stood a little apart, pretending they didn't hear. "Low profile," I whispered, tugging his sleeve. "I told you—low profile." He laughed, louder. "Low...
I woke up to a voice close to my ear and a scent that pulled at some raw place inside me. "You're finally awake," she whispered. I blinked, half-caught between sleep and memory, and the room swam into focus. The ceiling was a blur of moonlight and paper sliding blinds. I reached to push myself up and felt a soft weight against my back. "This isn't Clyde," I thought. "Who?" she asked, laughing softly into my skin. The laugh pulled everything into place. The woman behind...
"I open my eyes and a white hand is holding the coffin lid." "Don't touch it!" someone screams. "I saw it—it's moving!" another voice shouts. I kick the coffin rim, push the lid all the way off, and sit up. People scatter like mice. "Stop! She's alive!" the eldest of the house blubbers. "Her throat—" a woman hisses, pointing. Her face is the same as the woman who stole my life for eighteen years. Deborah Ross. She smiles like a blade. I look at my hand. A red bud sits in my...
"I won't drink that." I jerk back from the bowl and spill hot broth on my hand. "You'll do as you're told," Caspian Caruso snaps, his fingers clamping my jaw as if I were a loose thing. "Drink." "I won't," I say again. My voice is small and raw. I can taste iron on my tongue. My sleeves are wet with other people's lies and a smell like old blood clings to me. His face is closer than it has any right to be. "You will," he says, and then he forces the bowl into my mouth. The liquid...
I remember the cliff like a photograph burned into the back of my eyelids: the wind that smelled of pine, a shout that was more hunger than language, and then the terrible, sudden blank. "Don't come closer!" I screamed, my voice a brittle thing in the dark. Three rough men moved like shadows on the mountain slope above me. One of them laughed. "Hahaha. Who will save you here?" the leader said. His breath smelled of iron and stale wine. "I—my sister will come. She's a genius in the...
Sometimes it takes a tiny act of courage to pull something out of your chest. Sometimes it's the courage to hand over a hidden bouquet, or to speak a shy sentence that bowls the whole room over. I had courage enough that night, and I did something worse: I gave away a secret. "Happy eighteenth," Gabriella said, holding out a glass box. "I thought you might like this." Her fingers were cool. Her smile was small and full of careful light, like a lamp kept on low in the corner of a...
I remember the winter the world felt hard as old wood and thin as paper. I was eighteen when my mother sold me for five silver coins and the cart rumbled me into Elias Longo’s life. “My girl,” my mother had said as she smoothed the cheap cotton of my only new jacket. “Dani says five coins is what it takes. Don’t blame me. It’s the match or nothing.” Her voice cracked like the cold air. I hid my hands in my sleeves. Frost had cracked the skin between my fingers; they stung and itched. I...
