Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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...
"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 woke up to autumn that tasted like iron and old paper. Leaves made a gold carpet outside; inside, the room smelled of grease and stale breath. I sat on a narrow cot and blinked until the world stopped spinning. "Where am I?" I asked myself aloud. A mirror on the wall answered with a stranger’s face. Oily hair stuck to a brow that had flakes. A double chin sagged. Cheeks puffed. My pulse jumped like it had been kicked. "This is impossible," I whispered. "I am Jordan Cole, not—" But...
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...
I tell this in the loft where I read my books and kept my nights. I tell it in the first person because every hurt and every small joy lived under my own skin. I will not dress it up. I will say the things I wanted said when there was still breath in me. "I said, 'Are you going to marry only my sister?'" I hooked my fingers in his robe and pulled. "Amara," Booker muttered, teeth as if clenched. "Do you have to call me that? Will you keep it up for a hundred years?" "A hundred years is...
"I can't breathe," I whispered to the dark room that had been my hospital ward for days, but the words felt thin and useless. "You're awake," Zander Atkinson said from the doorway, his voice flat as if delivering profit figures instead of condolences. "That's good." "No," I said. "Not yet." He came closer in a way that used to make my chest warm. "Aoi, we've all suffered—your aunt's death is a tragedy." "My aunt is dead because of Gemma," I said. Zander smiled like a tired man...
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 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 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 woke coughing saltwater into my palms, a bus full of people drowning in my throat. "Help—" I forced the word out like a last coin from a pocket. Someone kicked up under my feet, and I broke the surface. I woke fully then, heart sticking at the roof of my mouth. "No—" I whispered to the dark room, to nobody. "Joe, are you okay?" Lena's voice floated through the thin wall. "I'm fine," I lied, pressing my palms to my face until the world went dim. This was the dream that had...
I arrived in Huaihai under a sky the color of old metal. The airport lights smudged the horizon. The city breathed with the low hum of engines and factories, and the air tasted faintly of iron and distance. I pulled my too-large suitcase behind me and stared up, as if the stars might have remembered me. "You're Lydia Huang?" a man's voice asked behind a gate of hedges and fog. "Yes," I said. "Lydia." He nodded like someone who had been expecting a name he had only seen in a ledger....
I died with my dog at my side and came back to find my life had been stolen. I thought death would be peaceful. I was wrong. "You're a mess," said the man with eyes like frozen knives as his hand closed around my throat. I gagged, saw stars, and thought about the ridiculousness of being murdered in someone else's bed on my first night in a new life. "Let go," I croaked, because of course I had to be polite even while nearly suffocating. He tightened his grip and hissed, "You dared to...
It was a clear April morning. The sun felt kind, like a warm hand on my shoulder. I had an important meeting in forty minutes and my driver was inching forward at the intersection when I saw the old woman on the zebra crossing. "Stop the car," I told the driver without thinking much. "Go check on her. If she's hurt, get her to the hospital." The driver hesitated. "But boss," he said slowly, eyes on the crowd, "what if she’s trying to cheat someone? These things happen." "There are...
“I remember my mother putting me down and walking out of the kitchen.” The house smelled like boiled rice and smoke. My aunt stood at the door with her hands full. My grandmother watched from the stove. No one made a sound. “She’ll be safer here for now,” my mother said without looking back. I was three days old when I first felt someone else’s hand hold me. I don’t remember the cold. I remember the voice that called me, clear as a bell. “Come to Dad.” The man who took me from my...
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 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 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 slept with a silver bracelet on my wrist because my mother said it would keep me safe. That bracelet, half of what happened in the hospital, and a willow head ring I wore like a child's promise — they kept my life in a little circle of proof, and later they marked the hour the world turned. "Where's your ID?" my mother asked as I sat on the hospital bed with my legs drawn up. "They'll need it to register anything." "She's not going to register anything," I said, and the sound of my own...
I remember the temple as a river of blood and wood smoke, candles guttering like dying stars. I remember skirts stuck to muddy legs, the smell of iron and wet earth. I remember looking up and finding a man among the dead who was not dead. He only said two words. "Save me," he croaked. I had once saved a starving pup and failed; I had cried for it for days. So when I hauled the man onto a stray pallet and carried him home to the little courtyard my mother left me, I told myself I would not...
The slap landed like a blown window, and then I slid down the stairs. "I told you not to touch my things!" Ashton Bryant's voice thundered from above. I tasted copper and felt wood bite my palms. "Please," I managed, though the word came out small. "Ashton—" He stomped down, suit immaculate, jaw hard as if carved from marble. His face was breathtaking when it wasn't cruel, but his eyes wore a kind of hunger I had learned to fear. "You think this is a joke?" he said, and his hand...
