Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I spat river water into the mud and sat up with a gasp. "You're awake!" my mother cried. Her voice shook like a bell. "Where am I?" I said. My head thudded. My lungs burned. "Down by the river," she said. "You almost—" "Shh," she hushed me, but everyone around talked at once. "She tried to run away!" someone said. "She and that slant-eyed boy were seen near the boat!" another voice cut in. "She went crazy for a man, what a shame," a woman snorted. I blinked. I remembered...
"I told you to open the door!" I slammed my palm into the heavy gate again and felt the steel bite into my skin. "Please," I gasped, and the snow filled my voice. "Please, Jordan. I'm dying out here." The gate cracked open and a poised woman appeared. She wore furs and an expression like a closed vault. "You shouldn't be here at one in the morning," Katrina Gibson said, and her voice cut colder than the wind. "What are you doing making a scene?" "I need to see Jordan," I said....
I slammed the script down so hard the pages rattled across my dressing table. "What a terrible script! Who wrote this trash? The heroine is supposed to beg for forgiveness? Gross." I hissed, my fingers still trembling. "Annika, calm down. Don’t wrinkle your pretty face—wrinkles don’t suit you," Dennis said as he bent to pick the scattered pages up. "Do you seriously expect me to play that Li Yi character? She cheats, she ruins things, then she gets forgiven? No way." I crossed my arms...
I never liked late study sessions, but that winter evening the darkness came faster than I expected. The classroom heat felt like a heavy blanket—dozens of breathing bodies steaming the air until it felt thick. Someone left the back door cracked; a cold gust slid through and for a minute the stale classroom felt bearable. Then someone slammed it shut and the warmth rushed back. "Everyone, look up," Regina Duffy tapped the blackboard, her voice a practiced bell. "We’ll go register...
I woke to cold that ate my bones. "Where am I?" I mouthed, but the words were small and scared. The world smelled of mildew and old straw. My hand—no, not my hand—felt tiny. I tried to pull it under the blanket. My fingers were stiff and thin like a child's. "Hey, you alive?" a voice whispered through the gap in the temple door. I heard the shuffle of old feet. I tried to answer, but my voice came out like someone double my age coughing. Panic rolled through me like a tide. "Keep...
I woke up in a silk dress with a red veil over my face and a stranger's name already in the air. "Blakely," someone said behind me, low and sure, "come out, my bride." I could feel the weight of a hundred sets of eyes, and even through the veil I heard the city celebrate. I tasted something like panic, like the aftertaste of too much baijiu, and then some stubborn, private part of me laughed. "You are ridiculous," I muttered into the veil, talking to myself the way I always did. "I did...
“Do you hate me?” I asked before I could stop my voice. He froze like the world had paused for me. Romeo Salazar’s jaw worked once, then he smiled a small, unreadable smile. “No,” he said. “Why would you hate me, Gracelyn?” I shouldn’t have answered. My mouth always betrayed me. “I… I don’t hate you,” I said, stumbling over the words. “I… I don’t.” He watched my mouth like it was the only thing in the room that mattered. Around us the library hummed with study lamps and whispered...
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 kept my hands on the little girl's hair and listened to the thud of the kettle. The house felt too small for all the noise—my mother-in-law's voice was a sharp stone in the air, my daughter's small sobs a answered bell, and my own pulse like a drum. "Tell me," Guadalupe said, slamming a paper on the tea table, "whose child is she?" I picked up the paper without thinking. The words and the numbers leaned at me like an accusation. A paternity test. Her name at the top—Guadalupe Devine—and...
"I followed him for three years," I said, and my voice was raw from repeating the truth to myself until it did not sound like a question. "Three years," Wells said, counting on his fingers as if time could be measured that way. "And the Empress made you drink three bowls." "I remember each bowl," I answered. "I remember the bitter, and I remember the way my body clenched after the third." Wells Carr's face did not change much. He was a small man with steady hands. "You were never...
"I told you I'd be there," Adam Hashimoto said into my phone, urgency fraying the edges of his voice. "I see your location," I replied. "It's out of the way. I'll be there soon." "I left a message," he said. "It's urgent." I turned the wheel and the summer sun hit the hood of a black car with a hard, sharp glare. I saw Adam leaning through his own window at a distance, waving at me like a boy. Clementine Conrad sat beside him, gentle and grave, forehead bowed as if she had always...
I still remember the cold metal of the bathroom stall door under my palm that night, the press of bodies outside the cubicle, and the way the room smelled of expensive whiskey and cheap panic. The fans had come like a tide—shouting, shoving, two steps from ruining the whole evening. They called me by the name of a character I once played, not mine. They thought a fake life was real. "I can't breathe in here," someone hissed outside. "Split up and search," another voice barked. I...
They made me kneel on a rooftop because a man called Azriel Burns wanted me to die a public, slow death. "I will say it," I told him. "I am the murderer. I deserve this." He smiled like a judge and a pyromaniac at once. "Say it louder." So I shouted until my throat was raw, until the words were shards. I said them with the same voice I used to use for applause. "I am the murderer. I deserve this." "Good," Azriel said. "One hundred times, Leonor. One hundred times you jump, and...
I am a side consort. I tell people that straight away because being honest about your title makes life easier, and because I have bigger priorities than palace etiquette. My priority is food. "You're marrying the crown prince," Father said once like it was nothing more than a piece of news. "Your 八字 suits him. It will be good for our house." "I care about the kitchen," I told him. "Is the cook good?" "Salvador," my father — Chancellor Salvador Hall — answered without looking up. "We...
I knelt in the rain before two glossy photos placed on a low table, and the world narrowed to the soft, smiling faces of my mother and father. My knees burned from the cold stone, my throat was a dry well, and the funeral crowd passed like a river around me. "Susana, you're going to faint," Zhang, the housekeeper, whispered, her hand trembling near my elbow. "Let me be," I said, but my voice was a paper thing. "Just... one more minute." People came and went to speak polite words at the...
I still remember the sound the crowd made that day on the rooftop — a raw, animal noise that rode the wind like a warning. The railing under my palms felt cold and thin, like a promise ready to snap. I didn't move. I only watched. "Don't do it, Jayce," Faron Graves shouted from below, voice blown through a megaphone. His hair flapped in the wind and his eyes were all teeth and light. "Come down, talk to us. We'll help you." "Stay away!" Jayce Koch screamed back. His voice had gone from...
I remember the exact way the room went quiet when the bottle pointed at him. "Truth," Hugo said, as if the word itself were a cool drink. I spat my drink onto the carpet like a volcano. "What did you say?" I croaked, and immediately wished I could dig a hole large enough to swallow me. "Been in a relationship?" someone else asked, half a dare. Hugo looked at me very slowly, like he was scanning a page he'd read many times before. "Yes." "Do you still—" a bearded guy started, then...
I remember the club room like a cold, sealed glass box. The air conditioner hummed and could not warm me. I smiled on schedule. "Ulysses," I said, letting the name land light and careful. He did not crack. His handsome face was a stone cut from winter. He stirred his coffee with one long finger and laughed a laugh that was not kind. "You threaten me?" he asked. "I don't dare," I answered, and then I let the truth slip in like a pebble. "Only I know you took me without consent. Only...
“Don’t fall asleep, stay with me!” I heard his voice, clear and low, while the world blurred into red. I remember his hands—strong, warm—lifting me out of the wreck. I remember the clean smell of him, like summer sun. I remember thinking, I will live just to make him mine. I woke in a hospital bed. He was gone. I also woke with a choice: a life mapped by my grandfather and a man I hated waiting three months away. I had one plan. I would find the boy who saved me and bend him around my...
I was dying. "I have pancreatic cancer," the doctor said, looking at me like I was a fragile porcelain doll. "How long?" I asked. "Months, maybe. It's advanced," she answered. I nodded. "Then don't lie to me about hope." That was the honest part. The rest I rehearsed in my head like a speech. "Elliot," I whispered later that night as my phone buzzed. "Don't be late tomorrow." "I won't," he said. "I promise." He had promised me so many things over the years. He had...
