Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I took the glass from his hand." I said it before I felt it. My fingers closed around cold glass, and all the noise in that private room slowed to the sound of my own breath. "Don't drink," I told him. "Not tonight." He didn't look at me. Sebastian Fontaine kept his smile with a woman folded into his arm like a prop. He looked at the woman and laughed, like I was air. "Julia," he said once, as if that was enough. "I am not your ghost," I answered. I put the glass on the...
I couldn't remember the exact date of our wedding anniversary until the office calendar reminded me with a red dot—except that day on my phone was April 15, not July 20, and my memory had knots where the years should be. Still, I stood in Finn's company lobby, clutching my bag like a talisman and tapping his number. "How much longer?" I typed, and his reply came quick. "About half an hour." I sat on the cold sofa and listened to the hum of air and shoes. Two colleagues passed me,...
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 posted a joking little sad note and my calculus professor offered to introduce me to his son." That was how absurd my week began. "Valeria, you can't be serious," Miriam said, poking my phone as if it were fragile. "You posted 'poor little me, no one loves me' and he actually replied?" "Yes." I was still staring at the message. "Professor Paul actually messaged me. He said, 'Valeria, my son is nice. I'll push you together.'" Miriam slapped the table. "You mean Paul Crawford? Our...
I have been called many things. Tonight, when the city slept and a reward of gold flashed across the capital like a fever, I tore my veil off, sat on the bed, crossed one leg over the other, and drank a little wine. "You're mine now," I said to myself, thinking it was a joke. He cocked his head and spat three words that made my evening less funny. "Damn, ugly." "You're so charming," I muttered. "Are you always like this?" He looked at me like he wanted to throw me out of his sight...
“Do I even have a home?” I asked, voice trembling under the gray rain. I had the dress in my hands, the satin sticking to my palms. My phone flashed a headline like a knife: “Quinn Ivanov and Leia Mitchell spotted entering hotel together—engagement rumors.” I looked up through the raindrops and Quinn’s face was a cold island. “You’re not a child anymore,” Quinn said. His voice was flat and dangerous. I closed my eyes, and the rain blurred his features into someone I loved and someone I...
I bolted upright as thunder slammed the bedroom window. "Get up! Move!" a woman hissed, grabbing my wrist. I tasted metal and salt and knew two things: the house was burning and I could not find my father and mother. Rain stabbed the glass. Men shouted like animals outside. "Come with me, Miss," she said. "Now." "Where are they?" I cried, voice small and useless. "To the garage. Fast." She threw a coat over me and ran, the world a blur of flame and gunfire. We hit the stairs....
I remember the first night I married Gideon Russell like a strange, bright bruise—painful and impossible to ignore, but oddly vivid and unforgettable. "You don't mind, do you?" Gideon asked, standing half in shadow, one hand on the door frame, the other clamped around the neck of a wooden washboard someone had left by mistake. "I don't mind," I said, and pushed him. "After all, my husband can kneel before a washboard anywhere." He blinked. "But... your husband mind. Why should his...
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 woke up and my first thought was: this is impossible. I blinked against a strip of light filtering through blackout curtains and counted my breaths like a child checking whether monsters had left the room. The room smelled faintly of wild cedar and something floral I couldn't name. It was not my hotel room. The bed was too big, the sheets too crisp, the headboard too tasteful. I turned my head. "Duke?" The name came out as a whisper I didn't expect to know. He lay beside me like a...
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 still remember the first time I learned how useful a talking cat could be. "It is called diplomacy, woman," Reid said from the top of the wardrobe, his blue eyes cutting through the dim like two small moons. "You bribe with food, you bargain with attention." "You mean you," I snapped, "since you were the one who said 'roll' at the rescue shelter and then chose me." "Roll? I said 'roll' when you wanted me to show off. That is not the same thing," Reid corrected, very dignified as...
"I won't let you go." I said it before I could stop myself. The words were too big for my little chest, but they spilled out anyway. I am Ariana Marino. I woke in a stranger's body once—then again. I remember a cold platform, white silk, a blade of thunder, and names that burned like brand marks. I remember being a god called Ice Phoenix, and I remember jumping from the execution stand because living hurt too much. Then I was born into a noisy house, all boots and commands, and I had...
"We're done." I said it flat, like ripping a bandage, and watched Greyson's face freeze the way glass does when you throw a stone at it. "What?" Greyson Bond sounded small. "Why now?" "You know why." I tapped my glass with a fingernail because my hands wanted to shake and my mind wanted to bargain. "This was never more than a ladder for me. It ends here." Greyson swallowed. "You can't mean that—" "I do." I leaned in. "Don't come after me." Someone laughed behind us. I didn't...
I pushed the club door and the music hit me like warm rain. "Hey, Larissa," a yellow-haired guy waved me through. "Elias is over here." I held my canvas tote so tight my knuckles hurt and smiled small. "Is Elias here?" He looked me up and down. "Yep. Follow me." We stepped into the room where bass and bright lights battled. A man slouched on a sofa like he owned the shadows. His jaw was sharp, hair dark, and he looked half-asleep and all-danger. "Stand there," the man said when I...
I heard the voice again on the subway. "That man diagonally across from you is a mermaid. He's running out of water. If you give him a bottle of water, he'll become your boyfriend." 1 The voice first spoke to me when I was five. "Stop your parents from going out now, or they won't come back," it said. I cried until my small face was wet because I believed the voice. My parents stayed home that day. Later they told me a truck had crashed through the vendor stalls where they'd have...
I opened my eyes to an absurd sight: a man in a fake ancient wig had his arms wrapped tight around me, and his wig smelled faintly of river mud and too-much-hairspray. I pushed him off and slapped my hand to my chest. "What are you doing? That's not part of the price!" I spat. He stared, eyes wide like a morning gull. He trembled, his fists clenching, and after a long breath he croaked, "Autumn—Autumn, help your master undo the Heart-Bind Curse and I will forgive everything." Autumn....
I never thought the prophecy would name me. "Hui Neng says the empress will come from the Xie family," they whispered in the market, and then everyone spoke it louder until the whole capital had the sound in its teeth. "I heard he pointed north," my father told me, tossing his hand like a man trying to swat a fly. "He looked toward our house." "Of course he did," I said, though I had been the kind of daughter who climbed trees and stole peaches and came home with mud under every...
I had been stubborn even before I remembered being stubborn. "I don't go back," I said, mouth half full of hospital takeout, and the system blinked at me like an offended assistant. "You are the white moonlight," it said. "You must play out your role." "I ate vegetarian for years," I told it. "My lips had forgotten meat. You ruined my dinner by showing up late. No." "You will die early if you do not comply." "Then die early," I said, and meant it. The light on my forearm...
I never imagined a single misstep — a choice made for money and survival — would put me in the middle of two worlds: funeral lilies on one side and a sixteen-year-old storm on the other. My name is Frankie Arnold. I was twenty-three the day I learned how easily life could be rearranged like pieces on a poker table. "Is he your nephew?" Preston Cox squinted over his glasses like he could see my life in a ledger. "He's my son," I said and sipped my tea as if the word weighed...
