Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I saw the message on his phone the way you see a red warning light on a car dashboard—small, sudden, impossible to ignore. "Are you free tonight?" the contact asked. I froze with a fork halfway to my mouth. The contact name was saved as "V-wei," the kind of silly nickname I'd used for the girl from my hometown when I taught her the etiquette routines. Veronique Marques had called me "Caz" and "big sister" since orientation week. She'd been the kid I carried into the team, the one I...
I never thought my first day as a graduate student would end with a courtroom-like scene in the chemistry building, with half the department staring and my adviser, Canon Yoshida, shrinking under questions like a caught rat. I walked to orientation because my building was close and because I still used my old flip phone. My grandfather, Professor Elijah Zaytsev, always taught me to be careful with new tech. He said, "Some things are meant to be measured, not shown." I took coins to pay the...
I woke up after five years. The room smelled like hospital disinfectant and cheap tea; my head felt split open. My mother's face hovered near mine—Monica—alive and soft, and my mouth filled with a sound that was part laugh and part sob. "Are you awake, Emerson?" she whispered, fingertips worried at my forehead. "I—" I tried to focus. "Mom?" She smiled like sunlight. "You scared us. You were... fainting again. Rest, okay?" I hugged the illness, and the memory came back like a...
"I am allergic to men." "I am allergic to women." "I am allergic to fame," I joked once, and life decided to test me. "I thought you were asleep," Haley said when she opened the car door and saw me rubbing my left eye. "I am awake," I said. "Just tired." "Jude texted again." "He always texts," I said. "Ignore him." "He says it's promotion. He says it's fake. He says he's sorry." "Tell him I'm allergic to apologies," I muttered. Haley Alvarez shot me a look like she...
I woke up to bright white lights and a voice that said, "Sofia, you can breathe now." "Where am I?" I croaked, my throat raw. "You're safe," Drake said, hands steady on my shoulders. "You're home." "You—" I tried to hold the name, but the room blurred. "Drake?" He didn't answer like I expected. He only held me like a man afraid the world would blow me away if he let go. "You're tired," Jaelynn whispered somewhere behind him while someone lifted a towel for me. "You get cleaned....
I woke in a dark room with half-burned red candles guttering on the wooden sill. The light was thin and trembled. I lay curled on a straw-filled kang, my face like a white cloth. My name felt wrong on my tongue; everything felt wrong. "Where am I?" I whispered. A shadow moved beyond the oiled paper window. Men laughed, voices thick with rice wine and the kind of rough jokes that spill out at other people's doors. "This is my bed?" I said again, to myself. Someone pushed open the...
I died and the last call I made went straight to his voicemail. I hovered above the snow and watched my body curl into a small, defeated shape in the yard where we had grown up. My phone kept flashing beside me, "Drake Contreras" lighting the screen like an accusation. "He's calling back," I told myself, though there was no breath to make the words mean anything. "It's too late." I didn't want to die that day. The snow had been too soft, the swing's squeak too much like our childhood,...
I woke on a couch I had sat on dozens of times in another life and felt like I had been squeezed through a white light, pressed flat and stitched back into myself. "I... where am I?" I whispered, because the old habit of talking soothed me. "You're at Global Entertainment," someone said behind a desk. "Do you remember your schedule?" I blinked. The name did not belong to the day I had died. It belonged to a different timeline I had woken into: a world six months earlier than the one...
"I woke up with my head pounding and a cotton taste in my mouth." "Where am I?" I whispered. The room was too bright for morning. The sheets smelled faintly of cedar. My hand flew to the back of my skull and met a hard, warm bump. "Ow," I said. Someone rolled across the floor. The sound of a wheelchair clicked like a metronome. "Who are you?" I asked again, louder. A pair of polished shoes came into view. A man in black with a neat three-to-one hair part sat in a wheelchair,...
I died once on a roof under a red sunset. Then I opened my eyes inside a carriage and a different life answered me. "Who is she?" someone cried. "Protect the lady!" I blinked and my hands were smaller. My waist hurt where a blade had kissed me. My name, whatever it was now, smelled of jasmine tea and horse sweat. I opened my mouth and the voice that came out was not the one I'd left behind. It was soft and bewildered. People around me knelt and prayed. They called me "Your Grace." "Who...
I never thought a rabbit in a paper bag could start a war. "Ring the bell," Kathy said as if it were ordinary Tuesday business. "Who's there?" I called, wiping dirt from a vase I've already broken twice that week. "It's me. Your son's studio sent over dinner," Kathy Watts said through the door. "When did Aiden start ordering for me?" I asked, then opened the door. She stood there with a paper bag the size of a small child. "Your refrigerator space, dear," she said. "Aiden's...
I pushed the club door and the music hit me like warm rain. "Hey, Larissa," a yellow-haired guy waved me through. "Elias is over here." I held my canvas tote so tight my knuckles hurt and smiled small. "Is Elias here?" He looked me up and down. "Yep. Follow me." We stepped into the room where bass and bright lights battled. A man slouched on a sofa like he owned the shadows. His jaw was sharp, hair dark, and he looked half-asleep and all-danger. "Stand there," the man said when I...
I remember the sound of a basketball against sun-warmed asphalt: the dull, impatient thud that announced his arrival before he did. He called my name for the third time before I bothered to lift my head. "Sullivan," I said, jogging the last few steps. I held a bottle of water like a talisman. He was standing in the middle of the court, the late sun cutting a hard line across his jaw. He frowned in that precise way that had once meant everything to me and now meant nothing. "What are...
I always thought the worst thing that could happen would be losing someone. I never imagined losing someone and finding a copy in their place. "It’s ready," my mother said, carrying the tray into the kitchen. Her voice was the voice I knew better than any other. The clatter of bowls sounded normal. The light from the window painted the rice white. "You made liver?" I frowned and pushed my chair back. "You know I can't stand liver." She smiled and put a slice on my plate. "Eat. You’re...
"I said it once: we're breaking up." "I heard you," he sniffed, voice slick with practiced hurt, "Kiana, we've been together over a year. Don't you know how hard it is for me—being Liam Benjamin—trying to keep my image? Do you expect me to explain every rumor?" I watched him in the hospital room, the man who had once been my whole sky. Black suit, neat jawline, actor swagger like a brand. He tried to spin the world into his favor with a few smooth lines and the right tone. "I said it...
I learned one thing fast: if someone wants to bury you, give them the shovel and a good watch. "You ready?" Jessie asked, peering at me over her laptop like a nervous conspirator. "I'm always ready," I lied, because I wanted to sound steadier than I felt. My voice was small in the kitchen light. My palms were damp. "What if it backfires?" Josephine asked. She had that soft, scared way of speaking where every sentence begged forgiveness. "It won't," I told them. "Because the photos...
I held the thin diagnosis sheet at the hospital gate and watched the sunset bruise the sky. I wanted to call Lucas, but my thumb hovered and then withdrew. His name was the first on my phone. "Bea," his voice came, as always low and steady, kinder than usual. "I have something tonight. I might be late. Eat early, okay?" "Okay," I said. Short and as ordinary as the evening light. He clicked off. The line went dead. My throat closed around the small, heavy secret. I had loved him for...
I never panicked when the girl on the phone told me my husband was with her. I did not panic because I knew Arden Black would never really leave me. But she said, "He never planned to divorce you. He plans to kill you." 1 "You believe beauty can be heard in a voice?" she asked me on that first call, almost joking. I heard it then. I heard the softness, the calm, the thread of something young and untrained. I heard the wrong kind of sweetness. "Who is Liang—" she began, then...
"My sister is dead." "I know," I said. "I just... I just got a text from her phone." "Owen?" I heard a small voice from the hallway. "Are you sure?" "No, I mean—" My voice cracked. I pressed the phone screen until the dim light blurred. The message sat there in a plain bubble like a bone: three lines, nothing more. "Be careful of people in red clothes." "You can eat what Mom prepares, but if you find teeth, nails, hair or other human bits, don't tell Mom." "Be home before ten....
I almost laughed when my mother called me "old maid" at my birthday dinner. "You're thirty soon, Kinley," Maureen said, waving a napkin like a wand. "You should be thinking about settling down." "I know, Mom," I said, and smiled the way you smile when you're defusing a harmless mine. "I'll let you pick someone suitable if you like." Maureen huffed theatrically and went back to fussing with the candles. Grant, my father, pretended not to notice, reading his paper, but his eyes flicked...
