Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I told my childhood partner, "I like your best friend. Don't tell him." He laughed without moving his lips. "Say that again and I'll punch you," he said. I prodded his throat anyway. "You're so strict about secrets," I muttered. "We're done with comments, Claire." Carter Johnson's voice was flat. He leaned back against the doorway like he owned the frame. "Don't say anything more." "I wasn't even trying," I complained. "Good. Keep it that way." 1 Finn Castillo was getting...
I don't actually go mad. "I didn't see anything," Sofia said, voice trembling like a child. "Sofia didn't see—Sofia wasn't trying to—" Sofia's eyes were wet. "Senior Sister, you won't blame me, right? I didn't mean to disturb your...your thing with Senior Brother." I stood very still and let her assume what she liked. "You walked in," I said, cold and flat. "You saw. You smiled. You thought you had my part." Senior Brother flinched and shielded her with his arm. "A'ying," he said,...
I remember the roses. I remember the white lilies crushed under a thousand shining shoes and the way the air tasted like perfume and flash bulbs. I remember sitting at the end of an aisle that looked like a painted dream and thinking, This is finally done, at last. "You promise?" the host asked, voice bright in the hall. Graham stood before me like always — too beautiful, too calm, the kind of man who made everyone else smaller by existing. He looked at me slow and steady, and I thought...
I had no plan to meet Sullivan Arnold again that afternoon. "He's my cousin's dentist," Cash Bradley said as he bounced on his heels in the clinic waiting room. "You asked me to come," I told him, tugging on his sleeve. "You didn't have to make it dramatic." He grinned. "But you came. You're my hero." The reception clock clicked. The nurse called a name and the door opened. A man in a white coat stepped out. "Sullivan?" I heard his voice before I saw his face. My heart did a...
"I woke up and everything smelled like someone else's life." "I thought," I said, "I thought I'd opened my perfume shop again." "But this isn't the shop," Daisy whispered, pressing a cool cloth to my forehead. "Miss—Anna, you must rest." "Itchy," I tried to say, and my throat answered with a rasp. "My head—" "She's awake!" someone outside the curtain crowed. "The eldest is up." "Good," a woman's voice cut in sharp as a knife. "Up and about? You expect me to tell Lord Brandt your...
I flipped a coin on a kitchen table that smelled like old tea and sterilized bandages. "I'll go if the ship side shows," I told the air. "Heads—I'll go. Tails—I'll stay." The coin spun. I watched it like I watched people's faces for a living: searching for truth in a small, turning thing. "It landed heads," I said to the photograph of Mom. My voice was thin. "So I go." The contest poster on the square had promised a first prize of fifty million star-credits, plus room and board from...
"I don't understand," I said, squinting at the open coffin. "Why is it empty?" "It was supposed to have a body," whispered the maid I used to be. "They paid to bury her." "I won't be anyone's bait," I snapped back before I thought. "You die, you stay dead. Not on my watch." He laughed then — a soft, wrong laugh in the moonlit trees. "Twenty taels," the student said. "Do this and you will be set for life." "You wanted money for murder," I said to the two of them. "You're...
I woke with a choking sound in my throat and the taste of iron in my mouth. "Too tight," I whispered to the dark that had been pressed against my throat in the dream. "It hurts." A black thing—no, a tail—coiled over me in that dream, cold as a river stone. It slid along my neck like a shadow with scales. It pressed until I could not breathe. When the tail flicked across my cheek, it turned into his face. "You are for me," he said, and the voice was ice and hunger. "You are mine to own...
"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 woke up under the bridge, arms wrapped around a rotten branch like a castaway who'd found a plank. For a moment I thought the water would take me again. Then another memory punched into my head—sharp and irrefutable. "I died," I whispered. Someone had already died once. That truth was a cold stone settling in my stomach. Then the rest came: the ring that had bled and bound me to a small, impossible space. The ring that had always been a joke in the house—an old family heirloom—was a...
My first night at the Yamaguchi estate smelled of old wood, medicine, and something that made people keep their distance. I had come to the city to find my parents, and I never expected my search to start behind the heavy oak door of a small villa where a man coughed like he was shaking pieces of himself out of his chest. "Mr. Yamaguchi, I brought the medicine," the house servant fumbled at the door handle. His fingers trembled. "Get out!" a voice snarled from inside. The coughing kept...
I found out my boyfriend had ghosted me on Valentine's Day because someone sent me a photo. "Look at this," my friend Jasmine Barrett texted, and I stared at the image until it blurred. In the photo, a woman in a pale yellow dress sat in a car with her back to the camera. My boyfriend—Kellan Zeng—had his face turned toward her, smiling like a lighthouse. Neon behind them flashed: "Valentine's Day—Second Drink Half Price." "This isn't me," I whispered to the room, touching the white...
I remember the smell of the old house before the words did. "Grandma," I said, kneeling by the bed as if proximity could pull her back from somewhere far and thin, "what are you saying? A qilin? Three beasts? Stop being silly." She smiled in a way that made the skin on my hands prickle. "Eleanor," she said softly, "you were born with them. I only waited to tell you until I could not wait any longer." The white cat on the windowsill blinked at me, utterly ordinary except for how it...
I was eighteen years inside the palace when I smiled and refused Finlay Colombo's offer to raise me into his principal consort. I bowed, accepted a lesser rank, and the smile held a deeper secret. "You are modest, Holland," he said, almost fond. "A gentle light makes the court easy." "I serve as I must," I answered. He left with that lightness, thinking he had bowed a reluctant woman. My lips still held the scent of jasmine. I had painted the same jasmine on my lips that morning, a...
I remember the wagon smelled like wet wood and old hay. "I don't belong to them," I said, even though I was four, and my voice came out small. They laughed and tied my hands to my lap, thinking a child could be fooled by rope and a new name. "You'll learn to call yourself Dahlia Luna," the woman said. "It sounds pretty, doesn't it?" I watched the woman’s fingers, the way she turned the coins over in the dim light. Her laugh was soft and sharp both—like a blade and a ribbon. She...
I pushed the room service cart into the presidential suite on the thirty-third floor and rehearsed my smile for the fiftieth time. "Room service," I called, my voice like honey. "Dinner for the suite." The door opened. A thin man in black-rimmed glasses darted out with a stack of folders. "Old rules: set it, step back," he said without looking at me and vanished down the hall. I swallowed. "Set it, step back," I mouthed to myself. That's what I planned to do—except I wasn't going to...
"I’m a flower," I told him. He looked at me as if I’d said something normal. He tilted his head, the brown coat at his shoulders rustled, and for a second his face was blank as a sky without clouds. "You're a what?" he asked, carefully. "I’m a flower that’s about to wither," I said. "Can I be planted in your pot?" He blinked. I blinked back. The elevator hummed; our skin smelled like elevator air and the faint soap of his coat. I sat down right on top of him with a rubbish flourish...
They told me what would happen if I loosened my grip: a dozen men would die. They also told me what would happen if I tightened it: my heart would break over and over until it was empty. I chose the first option and wore my uniform like armor. I chose the second one because it was easier to play a fool. "You look thin," Cade said the first morning he woke up in my apartment. "Thanks," I said, and lit a cigarette for the camera I had secretly planted in his coat. "Sleep well?" He didn't...
I left the lab late, my hands still smelling faintly of cleaner, my notebook full of data that could make my thesis sing. I was tired but precise. My phone buzzed in my bag like a trapped insect. "Emerald, your phone's been buzzing," Denise said, tapping my desk. I pulled it out. Forty-one unread messages. All from Bear West. "Emerald! Why won't you answer?!" "Are you with that Yang guy again?" "You promised you'd never hang with him—are you cheating on me?" "Why didn't you answer...
I checked the leaderboard at 11:55 and the world stilled around the little clock in the corner of my phone. "Eleven fifty-five," Kaylee said behind me, chewing a piece of toast. "Breathe, Isa. Breathe." "I am breathing," I answered, but my voice sounded thin. "Just—just don't jinx it." The first two pages blinked past and I kept tapping refresh like a reflex. The show had nine debut spots and the ranking felt like a cliff edge. "Where is he?" I whispered to the screen like it might...
