Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
April 1 arrived like a rumor that got louder and louder until it became roar. The clock turned midnight and someone pushed a post onto WB that exploded the small world I had been trying to keep steady. "One hundred percent true! Former DreamChasers pro Isla Hayashi is back as DreamChasers' coach for the Summer Split!" I watched comments spin like a storm. "Is this real? Wasn't she—" someone wrote. "She was in a car accident last year!" another replied. "She became a vegetable,...
I never imagined that a hand holding my wrist would change the course of my life. "Mom!" he cried, face lit like a child about to tell the best joke in the world. I blinked. He was at the school gate, earnest and bright, clinging to my arm as if I belonged to him. "Excuse me?" I said. "Who's your mom?" He looked at me like I had asked the sun to stop shining. "You are. I'm your son. I'm from thirty years later. I'm here to save you." I pulled my phone out like a reflex. "Hello,...
I woke up in a hot, dusty room and the first thing I thought was: this is not my bakery. "Who are you?" I asked the cracked wooden door, though no one answered. I am still Ida Ogawa. I am still me. But the year on the calendar in the corner said 1984, and the name stitched on the thin quilt over my shoulders matched the name on the marriage certificate pinned to a crooked nail: my name, married into the He family of Rainbow Village. It felt like someone had taken my twenty-something self...
I woke to a white ceiling and my own blood cooling on my skin. "Sign this," my father said, like he was asking me to pick a chair. "It's for the hospital file." "Why—" I tried to stand. The guards holding my arms tightened. "Why would you make me sign after you bailed me out? You said you believed me." My mother, Laurel Bond, sat on the couch with the kind of smile that had no warmth. "Grace, you should know by now—everything has a price." My brother Julian Boone tossed a paper onto...
I had rehearsed how to sit, how to smile, how to look like someone whose life had been arranged into flawless order. "Are you sure about this, Estrella?" Ernesto Box asked in the elevator, glancing at me as if he could read the small script I had written under my ribs. "You sure you want to be the one to greet her at arrivals?" "Very sure," I said. "Edmund trusts you to manage the logistics. So does he trust me to handle people." The elevator shuddered. Lights hiccuped. The car dropped...
I was supposed to be at the high school hall for the hundred-day pep rally, but my mother dragged me to the hospital for a check-up. On my eighteenth birthday she handed me a folder. Inside was a kidney transplant consent form. "You must sign," she said. "No," I said. She did not let go of the paper. She looked at me with a focus I had never seen before. Her eyes were raw with a tiredness I knew too well, but there was no softness for me. Only for my brother. He lay across the...
I was leaning against a brick wall in a back alley in Northwest T, chewing the stub of a lemon lollipop like it was a life preserver. "You're late," the system piped in my head. "I sleep before eleven," I said out loud, because I had to argue with something, even if it was only an invisible voice. "My back hurts if I stay up." "You volunteered," the system said, very patient. "Blake Schultz is in the alley. He was stabbed. Go." I walked. The smell of garbage and something metallic...
1 "You bought red bean buns for him again?" "Yes." I pushed the damp hair from my face. "Why?" Sophie Brooks snorted. "Because you like him, that's why. You still don't get it." "I don't like him like that," I lied and smiled too big. "Then why did you buy them?" Sophie repeated. "I—" The bell cut me off. "Because he asked me to. Because I wanted to help." "You always want to help." Sophie shook her head. "Natalia, don't make a fool of yourself." I laughed too quickly....
The day I got out, two men were waiting. "Jaylee, get yourself a job. Stay decent," the guard said as he shoved the iron door open. "I will," I replied, though I wasn't sure who I was promising. Outside, snow was falling so thick the two men looked like two pale statues in tuxedos: one in a black umbrella, one checking his watch like a man who couldn't stand being patient. The Mercedes and the Panamera glinted under the street lamps. "Forrest?" I said when I recognized him. His face...
"I can't make it tonight," Leonardo said, like it was nothing more than traffic. "You promised," I said. He was already half-dressed for the door, cufflinks glinting. "I have a dinner with old classmates. Don't wait up." "I made your favorite," I said. "Spicy boiled beef, just like you like it." He glanced at me once, the way people glance at paintings in a gallery—interest without feeling. "You always try too hard, Isabel." He said my name with that slow tone, like reading a...
Tonight I drank more than I meant to. Tonight I had a plan. "I want him," I told the empty room, and laughed at myself. I had lived with Ely for months. He was my flatmate, the kind of man who left laundry immaculate and cut charts of his week like they were treasure maps. He smiled too little, read too much, slid into kindness like it cost him nothing. He was handsome in a way that hurt your eyes if you looked too long. He was good at everything. He was hard to take. So I got tipsy...
"Get up. Now." I pulled back the sheet and shoved the tray into his hands. "Mary?" Arlo's voice was thin. He squinted at me like the light hurt him. "Why are you—" "Because you spat blood in the car and I don't want you to die on my watch." I set the bowl on the bedside table and folded my hands. "Drink it." He stared, then drank. He hated the medicine but he shrugged away protest with a weak smile. "You put your hands anywhere near that mess called my chest—" "I don't take...
I returned to the garden of my childhood with my suitcase and a trembling smile. The courtyard smelled of fruit and flowers, and a wind chime sang like a small bell. White star-shaped flowers hung like little moons on the vines. My palms stayed empty, but my chest felt full. “Beatrice,” the old man called out, his voice soft and rough like an old page. “You’re finally back.” “I’m back,” I said. “It’s good to be back.” He hummed a tune and then a loud clap of movement cut through the...
I almost wish I could say the Maserati was at fault. "I hit your car," I said into my phone, voice paper-thin, "I— I don't know what to do." "Are you kidding me?" Laney's voice was equal parts shriek and laughter. "You crashed into a Maserati? Janessa, you're famous now." "I am not famous. I'm terrified," I whispered, because the Maserati looked like a small black shark parked on the curb and my shared bicycle looked like a dented tin can that had given up on life. I had swung the...
I knocked until my knuckles hurt. The woman inside the door moved like she owned the night. The light through the peephole showed a braid, a silk robe, a hand on a towel. My own hand trembled and I told myself to breathe. “Who is it?” a voice called. “It’s me,” I said. “Open the door.” There was a long pause. Then the lock clicked and the door opened a hair. “Faith?” she said, and then she saw me. Her face changed fast, like a light being switched from warm to cold. The...
I held Finch's collar and felt the old habit of waiting at the station sink into my bones. "It's okay," I told him, and the dog cocked his head like he understood. "Go on, eat." Finch limped to his bowl. I watched him, then at the uniform folded on the chair where Christopher's medals used to glitter. I could still smell smoke on it, like memory stuck to cloth. "You should be home," I said to the empty room, though the siren of a distant engine answered me. I had learned to talk to the...
"I heard you're only with him for revenge." "Who told you that?" I asked, lifting my chin. The cafeteria light made a glare on my phone screen; Cooper was grinning like he was enjoying a private joke. "Valeria said it, obviously," he said. "Valeria said a lot of things," I said. "Does that make it true?" "You paid him to be your boyfriend," Cooper said. "She said you pay per hug." "She is a terrible liar," I said, and then I laughed too hard, because anything quieter would have...
I am Leilani Conti. "I am the foot-washer's daughter, the one who knelt before our mistress and called her 'Miss' when the sun was harsh and the soles of my feet were raw," I say, and the memory tastes like cold water. "Kirsten," they told me once, "you are my dog." She spat it like a curse. "Know your place." "You'll be married to a good family one day," she promised in other tones—threats braided into false comfort. "If you step out of line, I'll have you paired with a mangy hound....
"I think my cat is a thief." "I said that out loud?" I laughed at myself, but the laugh turned small when Felix Lombardi blinked at me from the sofa and trotted over with something bright in his mouth. "Felix!" I hissed, but my voice had more fondness than anger. He dropped the cloth at my feet—yellow, ridiculous, printed with bananas—and sat looking proud. "I already told you, he is not a regular cat," I said. "He is a criminal mastermind." Felix rubbed his head against my shin...
I count the petals one by one. "Happy anniversary," the florist boy says when I open the door. He holds out a small bouquet, nine white roses caught in fragile paper. "Thank you," I say, and the roses go into the vase like something borrowed. White roses are delicate. White roses belong to my sister, not to me. Jordan loved white roses. The phone on the table buzzes with a number I had once memorized for ten years. I let it ring three times before I text back, "On my way." "Mrs....
