Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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...
I woke up on the kang, cold sweat soaking my hair, shouting a word that tasted like glass. “No!” I sat bolt upright. My chest heaved. My palm went to my face and came away wet. Tears. Real tears. “It was just a dream,” I told myself, but my voice sounded thin. The river had taken them in my dream—my parents swept away by a sudden rise of water. At the funeral the paper burned wrong and the whole house caught and my three brothers were inside. I had screamed; I had been dragged back. I...
I never thought a public bus would tell me who I was. I never thought a timetabled vehicle would be the last honest thing in a world of lies. "Seven twenty," I said the first time out loud, to the empty bench at the stop. "Always seven twenty." Someone behind me laughed, a small nervous sound. It was Maja. "You say that like it's a prophecy." "It's a schedule," I said. "Prophecies are supposed to be wrong." "You're the only one who notices," she said, and she did not sound pleased....
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 need two people," I said to myself the night I realized my assistant had quit again. "Why two?" a voice in the room asked. "It wasn't talking to me," I answered my empty office. "It was just the spreadsheet." The startup life had taught me how to argue with silence. "Five applicants," I told my phone the next morning, checking the list. "Pick two." Then I met them. Four of them walked right back out when they saw the place. "You're not paying real salaries," one man said and...
I have always known that my life was small and brilliant and brief. "You're the only one I will ever spoil," my father said once, and he meant it. Garrett Scholz ruled this land with a hand that let nothing shake his will. He gave me everything two kings could buy and all the softness he could find. He called me his "little pearl." He named me Joy when I could not even speak. He made it easy for everyone to think my life would be all music and lacquer and silk. "You're foolish to let...
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 do not expect a cat to ruin and remake a life, but then my life and the cat called Bat have always been a little odd. "Bat" is what I call him because the patch around his eyes is black on snow-white fur, like a tiny mask. People on our block started calling him Bat-Cat after he made a name for himself on a local show, and I still laugh too loud when I think of how seriously he takes the work of a professional thief. "Stop staring," I tell him, and he blinks slow, perfect cat-blinks at...
I still remember the snow the day my life cracked open. "It is decided. I return my pledge," Grant Robin told the court, bowing so deep before my father that his forehead nearly grazed the floor. The hall swallowed the words and held them as if afraid to breathe. "Grant," my father roared. "What madness is this?" "I know my place," Grant said, steady as iron. "I am unworthy of Princess Arielle. I beg leave to dissolve our engagement." "Unworthy?" Father stood so fast his robe...
I died with his knife in my ribcage and the taste of betrayal in my mouth. "Margot," he had whispered, "I've never loved you. Even your body disgusts me." "I will be grateful," I had said, staring at him with my last breath, "if you die with me and spare that bitch." He smiled like a gentleman as blood spattered his face. Brooks Lefevre, my husband of ten years, walked away from my body as if he had washed his hands. He left me for dead and used my family's ruin as his ladder into the...
"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 was exiled with iron on my ankles and fear in my throat. They told me I was being sent away because my father had been accused in the prince's case. They closed the palace gate behind me and made me small. "Marcella," someone said low in the dark corridor as they marched us, "stay close." "I will," I whispered, though I had no idea what 'close' meant anymore. A boy with the look of a soldier—tall, pale, and unbent—moved beside me when the guards rested. He had the slow, dangerous...
I was halfway through reheating tasteless takeout and ignoring a show everyone else in my dorm loved when the room exploded with noise. "Did you see this? Did you see Li Qing—" the girl behind me started, voice high, breathless. "What? Which Li?" someone else demanded. "Not Li, Li—" she thrust a phone in my face. "This post says she was taken by some old man. Look—there are pictures." The photos were grainy and embarrassing. The girl in the pictures wore a black dress, a makeup line...
"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 do not start with running or screaming. I start by sitting on the edge of the silk bed, fingers on the edge of a carved comb, feeling the raised line of the lotus on my chest. The room smells like incense and iron—palace perfume with the sharpness of men’s leather belts—and I hear wheels creaking somewhere beyond the curtains. "Are you cold?" Everett asks from the shadowed side of the bed. I look up. Even half-hidden in darkness, he looks like something painted into a story: pale,...
I had never been the center of anything important at college. I took notes. I answered questions when asked. I tried not to be noticed. That afternoon, a stranger handed me three milk teas at the foot of the teaching building and my life tilted. "Hi, the delivery's here," he said through the rolled-down window. His voice was quiet and the car smelled faintly of coffee. He held the cup out. "I—I'm downstairs by the shared bikes," I replied into my phone and then ran to the road. "I'm here....
I noticed the little white dot on my thigh the way you notice a pebble in your shoe — absurd, nagging, impossible to ignore. "It looks like a birthmark," Daria said when she saw it first, leaning over my laundry basket in our cramped dorm. "That's not a birthmark," I told her. "I would have known." "It’s so small. Stop fussing," Olga said, tying her hair with one hand while scrolling with the other. "You worry about the strangest things, Ivy." "Fine," I said. "I’ll check it...
I remember the heat first. "Why would they burn a tree?" I said to the smoke when I still had leaves. "They wanted to chase a shadow," a small voice answered from inside the palace yard. "I was a pomegranate tree," I told the world. "A thousand years a plain tree, and then—fire. Fire like a child's tantrum." "You didn't deserve that," the voice said. "Who speaks?" I asked. A small boy ran beneath my charred branches, rubbing his hands on his robe. "You moved," he said with...
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 never imagined my life would be decided by a clock and a television. "It wasn't me," I said. "Of course it wasn't," Helena said, as if reading an answer in a textbook. "Tell them again, Eliza. Make them listen." "Please," I whispered. "Please tell them the truth." "Why should I lie for you?" Katrina snapped, voice sharp like broken glass. "You insulted my brother. You said his music is trash." "You heard us argue—" I started. "Save it." Katrina's laugh cut me off. "You...
