Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"Two years," he said, voice breaking like thin glass. "Please, Ava — divorce me." I looked at Franz Luo and the world tilted. The lamp in his study had burned through the night; I had seen its light when I fell asleep on the couch. Now Franz knelt on our living room floor, eyes rimmed red, beard stubble on his jaw. He was the boy who’d learned to say my childhood nickname first. He was the man who had married me because our families fit. He was also the one begging to be let go. "Why...
The moon was a cold coin over the shore when I sat on a black rock and wrapped kelp around myself like a sad scarf. "I keep asking, System, how long until I can be human again?" I whispered. "You have about one hour," the System replied, voice flat as a ledger. I scowled and pinched the kelp. "An hour. An hour and a half of seaweed and sharks. Great." I moved my tail a little, testing the water. A cherry-red fin flashed out of the darkness and slapped the sea like someone stamping...
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 love Karter," I said in the empty room, watching my hand hold the wine glass like it was a mirror. "You always say that," Karter Rahman answered without looking up from his drink. "Because I do," I said. "Because he has the same eyes." Karter's laugh was small. "Same eyes as who?" "You know." He put his wine down and touched the faint marks on his neck. "Someone got carried away." "You were the one who wanted variety," I told him, smiling and pouring my wine over his face....
I woke up smelling old wallpaper and milk tea that was already cold. I blinked and the room around me was five years younger, smaller, less full of trophies and headlines. My hands were sixteen-year-old hands. My heart had the memory of falling. "You think I'm dead?" I whispered to the ceiling. "Why would I think that?" My own voice sounded thinner, younger. My throat closed on a laugh that tasted like iron. I remembered the high ledge, the scream, Qi Li's hand—Yulia's face—laughing at...
The metal cold bit into my wrist and the sound of the handcuff closing was louder than I expected. "Do you ever love me?" he asked, his chin tilted up as if waiting for a verdict. I tapped his cheek with the pads of my fingers like a joke. "No." "Enjoy your prison food then, my dear first-class merit," he murmured, and I laughed in the dark. The next morning, he vanished. "Joaquin Dorsey is gone," Cedric said, and the words slid off the meeting table like a dropped plate. "Guard...
I kept the old habit of making lists on whatever place was easiest: the notepad app, the sticky notes beside my desk, and the one person I had once used as a bookmarking pain in my life—Finley Matthews' WeChat. "You're using his account like a to-do list?" Ursula laughed the first time I told her. She was on my sofa with a salad bowl and a broken heart wrapped like a burrito next to her. "Someone needs to remember when to buy tampons," I said. "And when to go for my checkup. And what I...
I never expected my death to be the loudest celebration in the capital. "Everyone's crying for joy," they said in the streets. "The great thief-poisoner is gone." They shouted it like a blessing. "No one knows," I told myself. "No one knows I'm faking it." The palace called me back to the study the day I pretended to be dying. "Faron," I began, bowing as was proper. "Master, you summoned me." Faron Vinogradov—thin-skinned, boyish, with eyes like cold wells—looked at me across the...
I died and the world forgot to spend money on me. "I haven't seen an extra cent in five years," I told the empty account page, and the numbers blinked back like an indifferent sky. "Maybe they stopped burning paper for you," someone said from behind a table in a sunlit cafe I wasn't supposed to be in. I turned and saw him—Bryson Guerin—leaning back with one ankle over the other, a cheap lighter idly flicked between his fingers. He smelled like cigarette smoke and river nights, the...
I turned my phone off and laughed at myself in the dark. "You're absurd," I told the empty living room. "I thought he'd at least answer once." The balcony glass showed the city lights, and I killed the last lamp. I did not want my home to pretend to be one of those warm families tonight. I packed in silence. "I'll be gone by dawn," I whispered to the lock. When the taxi door shut, I tapped out a message I knew would be read: "Three o'clock at the registry. Bring the ring,...
I woke up to the smell of honey and a man’s breath on my neck. "Stay with me forever, okay?" Lucas said, his voice thick, his face tiny against my collarbone. I hugged him because my heart wanted to. I held him because everything in me was soft for the moment. Then his pocket buzzed. "Who is it?" I asked, already knowing. He pulled away, thumbed the screen, and answered, "I already got her home, don’t worry." "It’s not a joke," the message read. "Think about it. Marriage isn’t...
I am Iris Stone. The morning Esteban Lang told me, "The empress cannot be you," his voice was low and raw. "You mean that like a joke?" I said. He blinked as if surprised by my calm. "You're not angry?" "A little," I admitted. He took my hand then, like a child caught doing something forbidden. "I swear, Iris. Aside from the throne, I will give you everything." He almost laughed it away as if vows were toys. I did not laugh back. I was sixteen the day I was promised. I had...
I never thought I would say this out loud: I loved him like he was the moon I could never reach. My name is Jazmine Wilson. He was Eliot Wallace. We were young and messy and cruel in the way we loved. "You really came," I said the first time I saw him again at an airport lounge. "Of course I did," Eliot said, not looking around. "You look tired." "You mean like a ruin?" I answered. "Like a book everyone skimmed and then shelved." He smiled the way he always did, slow like a tide....
I sat up and spat out a mouthful of stale smoke. "You're awake?" a voice asked. I blinked. The room smelled of incense and old wood. I touched my face and froze. "Who am I?" I whispered. "You are Birgitta Choi, our holy maiden." The woman watching me—tall, pale, hair like a waterfall—smiled with a chill I did not like. "You were hurt. Rest first." I looked into a basin of water and saw a stranger’s face. Perfect skin. High cheekbones. Small, cruel mouth. I swallowed hard....
I woke to the edge of pain like an iron file across my lungs. "Mae, wake up," someone whispered and my world split into light and the smell of old wood polish. I tried to breathe properly. The air was thin and hot. My hand clutched something cold on the bedside table. A glossy paper calendar stared back at me: July 1980. "July 1980?" I mouthed. "What the—" A laugh that had no warmth threaded through my head, and every memory from the life I had been pulled out of—the last mission,...
I crashed my husband's Maybach into a Porsche. "Did you just...what did you do?" Creed Crouch's voice over the phone was calm, a low pool of danger and comfort that I had learned to depend on. "I'm so sorry, I—" I could hear the pavement under my phone, the tinny hiss of someone shouting near the cars. "I took your car without asking." There was a quiet two seconds. "Okay," he said finally. "Step out of the car. Stay where you are. I'll be there." He sounded casual, but I knew him....
I. Rumor and a Ruler's Scale "Have you heard?" one boy at the front table said, bouncing a book on his knees. "They say the prince could command an army with a glance." "Really?" I leaned forward. "Which prince? Which book? Who measured it with a ruler?" "He can speak three languages," another piped up. "And stand and—" "—and pee three meters?" I cut in, grinning. There was a ruler on my head before the laugh left my mouth and a thin voice behind me—my tutor's—said, "Kiana Meyer,...
I woke up at eighteen and found out everything I had been living in was written by someone else. "Is it ridiculous?" I told myself, sitting on the thin strip of mattress that had been mine since I was twelve. "Is it that silly?" The truth settled like a cold stone in my stomach: an entire world had a lead character who got favors the way rain gets puddles. Whenever she walked into a room, the air rearranged itself. "She?" I said out loud. "She gets the doors opened. She gets second...
I learned to sew before I learned to answer for myself. "I will take a concubine," Jagger said the moment he crossed our threshold that spring. He spoke as if the season itself had instructed him. I kept stitching. The unborn child in my belly had been with me five months; my fingers fumbled but I kept at my needle because that was what I could do. Only two little sets of garments were good enough to be shown. "Madam," he said louder when I did not look up, "did you hear? I will take a...
Part One — You and Only You I was Lydia Blake. Three years of college. Three years of quiet, foolish worship. Three years of collecting courage and excuses and phone numbers that led me here: a rumor on the confession board and a dozen laughing comments tagging the one who had lived in my chest like a crystal idol. "—Isn't that Lydia Blake? @Frederick Fontaine, come see, someone's stealing your girl!" someone posted. I looked at the comments, shut my phone, and let the silence gather...
