Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"Ping! Host 342615, hello. I'm your bound system 5001. Please treat me well." I opened my eyes to a room that looked mildly comforting and entirely wrong. My head should have been a smashed mess on that highway—either in a hospital or sealed into a black box. Instead, nothing hurt. A soft bed. A window leaking pale dawn. And a tinny, very polite voice in my ear. "Did you say I'm dead?" I asked. "No rudeness intended, Host. Sorry, Host. I only meant to explain the situation." The system...
I had learned to measure my days by other people's schedules. I woke when Mr. Teixeira woke, walked when he walked, and answered when he said my name. That rhythm had kept me safe for years, like a clock whose hands never slid the wrong way. "Kehlani, the head of WE is here," Foster said outside the glass door of Ezra Teixeira's office. "Send her in," Ezra answered without looking up from the file in his hands. I had rehearsed nothing for that moment, and when the door opened all the...
"I don't want to be caged," I said, but my voice came out like the whisper of dry grass. "You asked me to come back," Preston said, and his fingers closed over my wrist like a promise that could hurt. "I asked you to come back so you'd be here," I answered, "not to—" "Not to what?" He smiled the small, private smile that made my stomach do strange flips. "Not to keep you safe? Not to keep you from being hurt?" "I wanted to learn. I wanted to leave the mountain." I looked at him. "I...
I found the coin while my feet were kicking a stone down the sidewalk toward the university dorms. "I can't believe rent is this high," I muttered, and the coin jingled in my pocket like it had something to say. "Pick me?" a child's voice piped in my head, impossibly bright and impossibly nearby. "I didn't hear anything," I told no one out loud. "I heard it," Danielle Gardner said two steps behind me, her heels clicking like a metronome. "You're talking to yourself again,...
I woke in a room that should have been mine and yet felt borrowed—silk and lacquer, but with a hairpin I had never owned resting on the dressing table: a gold phoenix set with tiny rubies. I picked it up. "Does it suit me?" a voice asked from the lacquered mirror. "It suits me," I answered the mirror like a fool. I dreamed of a winter and a face I could not keep. "Hudson, did you ever love me, even for a breath?" In the dream my hand clutched the quilt and something warm and bitter ran...
"I don't know how to speak," I said to the dark room first, though my voice came out in my head through someone else's throat. "You are Imogen now," the system said, in a tone like a child with too much pride. "Time-Space Trading System YQH001. Binding complete." I blinked at the single slat of light and the bruise-blue skin beneath my sleeve. My hands were small and thin, nails cracked, and my pulse felt like a frightened bird. I tried to sit but a wave of pain made my teeth ache. The...
I woke choking on a scream and the taste of iron. "Let go!" I spat into the dark. "Please, don't sell us," someone begged, sobbing. "You're asking too much," a woman's voice hissed like wet cloth. I was twelve when I first learned how nightmares could smell like rain. I was Bristol He then—still am—and I have kept that name like a small, stubborn talisman. I clutched the rope of the dream like it was a vine thrown over an abyss. "Bristol!" Gina Youssef called, voice soft as cloth,...
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 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 woke to the itch at my neck and a sleepy voice in my ear: "Honey, mmm… is that you?" "It’s me, baby," he answered, low and warm. His voice had that slow, careful pull that made my ribs loosen. I opened my eyes to Leonardo Koch—his face in the moonlight was more dangerous than anything else. I slid a hand up and looped it around his neck. "When did you get back? You didn't tell me." "Didn’t want to wake you. Go back to sleep," he murmured. I tried. I really did. But when he...
They had already written my future in other people's mouths before I could even sweep the floor. "Mae, your mother was a fine lady once," the gossiping women in the courtyard said, tucking their skirts and nodding as if their words could stitch a life. "But look at you—you don't need pomps. A quiet life suits you." I wiped thin flour across my palm and felt the ache in my fingers like an old promise. "They only need my hands for work," I said. "Not my future." "Don't be silly, dear."...
"I can't—" I gasped, pain tearing through me like a struck bell. "Don't move," a calm, clipped voice ordered. "No! I won't! It hurts too much!" I cried, fingers clawing at the coarse hospital sheet. "Almost there. Breathe," the doctor said, then added with a practiced softness, "Isabel, use your breath. Don't shout." Isabel. The name made me blink through the fog. I opened my eyes and stared at the yellow bulb swinging above—an old hospital lamp that hummed. The smell of...
"Today is the day I tell him," I said to my reflection, and wrapped my trembling hands around the little paper lion I always kept in my purse. "Who?" my friend—no, my reflection—asked back. "Patrick," I said, and the name tasted like a closed door. The office smelled like coffee and spit-polished wood at nine in the morning. Patrick Arnold walked like a statue and wore a silence that made people speak louder than they should. My whole life, I had been "Jada, the secretary," the one who...
I found the hidden envelope on a slow Tuesday, while the city outside my window moved on with its ordinary noise and I held a cigarette for the first time in a week. "Don't smoke in the study," Hannah had scolded me for ten years. "I know," I told her then, and I knew she expected me to be better. Now the ash fell and I read. The envelope lay in a dark little slot behind a row of history books. The handwriting on the front was my wife's name, and the letters that worked out like...
I watched the first flakes fall and thought the whole world was being wrapped up in white cloth. "It looks like a painting," Cadence said, her breath puffing as a ghost of warmth in the cold air. "Don't you have to get ready?" Jemma asked, fussing with my cloak. "I'm not going," I said. "Not even for the New Year's Court?" Jemma blinked. She stood steady, hands busy as always. "Your Highness, the feast—" "I said no." My voice was quieter than I felt. The palace smelled of wood...
I have always told myself one small truth: my life only asks for a shallow shelter and a quiet corner. That was all I wanted. That was all I dared to want. "My lady," the old maid said, smoothing my sleeve, "appearances matter tonight. Remember your place." "I remember," I answered. My voice was soft as silk but steady. "I will do nothing that stains the house." The house was Vaughn Porter's. My father, Grand Tutor to strangers and lord to thousands, held sway in paper and in coin. He...
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...
I hate the new tutor because his skin feels cold and slick when he touches me. "I told you, Giana, stop being dramatic," Denver said, handing me a slice of pizza. "Not dramatic," I snapped. "He touched my hand and it was like ice." "Who touched your hand?" Denver asked, eyes bright. "Bowen Volkov." I pushed my hair behind my ear. Bowen had come to our house because my father wanted me to pass advanced math. Geoffrey McCormick thought a private tutor would save me from failing...
"Get out," I said, but my voice came out thin and shaking. Lincoln Warren stood in the doorway, back to me, one cold shoulder bare in the dim light. A stack of papers hit the bed with a soft slap. The divorce papers fanned like a cruel fan. "Juliana, stop pretending," he said. "Don't put on that act." I pressed my palm to my throat. "Lincoln, we just married. I—" He turned slowly. His face was empty. "Do you think for one second I married you out of love? I married because my...
“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...
