Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"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 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 woke into silk and cloud and a name that made my ribs ache: Daniela Crane, White Lotus Divine. "I am not good at dramatic names," I told the mirror and it only looked back with its usual indifferent beauty. "You're ridiculous," Mila Blackburn said, nudging her teacup toward me. "You were born ridiculous. Now sit—there's mooncake." "I'll sit," I said, "but not because of the name." "Of course not." Mila laughed. "Because of the mooncake." I had crossed over into this world like...
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 never thought a jar of ointment and ten boxes of crayfish would be the punctuation marks of my life. "Yo, you're pregnant?" Valentina Archer said like it was a joke and a knife both. "Yes," I said. She laughed, but I tilted my chin. "It's your brother's baby. Aren't you happy to be an aunt?" There was a sound of keys in the lock. "Nicoletta—" she started, then froze when Emmett Martini walked in and heard us. He stood there, coat half-removed, a shadow in the doorway. For a...
The doorbell had been ringing for at least ten minutes. "Open up, Vernon! I know you're in there! You can cheat, but you can't hide from your dog," I shouted at the top of my lungs. "Yours truly isn't going to sit politely while you steal my property," a voice inside called back, muffled. I planted my feet harder on the hallway tiles and pressed the bell button again. The upstairs hall echoed with my holler and the soft, annoyed footsteps of other neighbors. Someone down the corridor...
1 "I can't believe you didn't come to the rehearsal dinner," my mother said, standing in the doorway with her arms full of takeout boxes. "Mom, he had a meeting." I set the grocery bag down and forced a smile that didn't reach my eyes. "He had a meeting yesterday, and the week before. He had meetings the whole month," she replied. "Lydia, why are you always the one waiting?" "I'm not waiting," I said, because saying it made me feel steadier. "You look like you're waiting," she...
1 "It stopped raining at the cemetery," I said, though my voice sounded wrong to me. "You mean it kept raining," Lorenzo snapped back on my screen, with a tiny smug streak I could hear even in text. I stared at the photo he had just posted: two faces close, neon light behind them, popcorn in hand, the caption: "Best day of the year." He had tagged a girl. He had posted the picture at the exact moment my world narrowed into one room with white sheets and bright hospital lights. "I don't...
I dragged my suitcase off the bus under a sun that felt like an oven and followed the long line like someone half-asleep. My shirt clung to my skin; the suitcase wheels rattled like they were about to fall apart. I shoved my hand beneath my shirt to pull at my bra the way a kid tries to hide when embarrassed. "Welcome to Qinyun Base!" the squad of instructors called in unison, the sound sharp as a whistle. Four in camouflage, two in dress uniforms. They snapped to salute and then watched us...
The night before my wedding, I learned a dangerous secret about people: their private thoughts sometimes leak like steam from boiling water, and for one strange hour I could hear them all. "This poor girl," the gentle house nurse kept thinking as she smoothed my hair. "She will never use what she learned in the village." I heard that voice and smiled; I did not understand what she meant yet. Then, after the ceremony, under the heavy red veil and the carved wooden bed where a prince...
I remember the first snow the year my sister ran away. It dusted the capital in silence while servants muttered that the chimes of fate had been pulled too early. "They rush marriages in winter," someone said, but I knew nothing of timing. I only knew the sound of my sister's laughter in the courtyard and the way she used to tuck my thin braids behind my ear. "Help me," she had whispered that night, cheeks bright with mischief. "You and I are birds, not pots on a shelf. Promise me you'll not...
I woke up to the wrong ceiling. "Where am I?" I muttered, and my hand found cool, unfamiliar sheets. The chandelier was a crystal galaxy. Red banners nodded at the balcony wind like a festival. I blinked and tried to sit up. "Elden, you awake?" a voice called from somewhere down the hall. "Elden?" The name sounded like a bell in my head. Elden Weber, the man whose face had haunted half the city and three chapters of the book I had skimmed before sleep stole me. I remembered—no, not my...
I remember the drought like a dry mouth that never found water. "Have you heard?" Spring—my maid, Jazlyn—whispered as she braided my hair. "Refugees crowd the borders. Everyone says the roads are full of dust and hunger." "I have heard," I said. "What else?" "There's a new general in the capital. Alejandro White. They say he is fierce, and his family is old and proud." "Is that so?" I laughed. "A general? How dull. Does he smile?" "He smiles at little things," Jazlyn said, then...
I never expected the map of my life to fold into a different color overnight. My name was Clementine Gray. I ran a tiny new supermarket in a sleepy district, and I liked the small, ordinary things: the hum of the air conditioner, the fizz of a cold soda, an ice-cold slice of watermelon on a July evening. "You opened this yourself?" Gerard Scholz asked the first week, leaning on the doorframe like he owned the breeze. "Yes," I said. "I did it myself." Gerard was the kind of boss who...
I never expected to sit in his emergency room six years after we broke up. "I need to see Conway," I said, showing the folder like a weapon. Conway Sorensen looked up from the chart as if I were a memory he had ignored for years. "Morning clinic's done. Come back this afternoon," he said without surprise. "I already paid," I told him and set the paper down, "I'm pregnant. It's yours." He blinked like someone waking from a dream he didn't want to own. "What child? We broke up six...
The sun had just split the sky into clean white when my brother, furious with drama and trying to be cooler than he was, did a flip at the school gate and twisted his ankle. "He's fine, it's just a sprain," the doctor said, but Maddox was on a stretcher staring at me like I'd betrayed him. I squeezed his hand. "Next life, no flips," I told him. A man in a dark uniform moved between the cluster of reporters and the stretcher like a blade parting the air. He looked down at us and then at...
"I tracked him for five years and failed. Five years later I found him in a KTV room full of hired models." "I can't believe this," I said, staring at the man who had lived in my head for half a decade. "It's Grayson Hawkins," Jewel said behind me, voice small and fierce. "You mean, the Grayson?" "He is," I said. "He always was." I had money now. Not by luck, not by a lottery. "My family has hidden savings," my father Ernst told me weeks before, shrugging like it was nothing. "I...
I am a surgeon and right now my patience is running on empty. "Move," I snapped at the shadow in the corner of the operating room. He wore a black robe and carried a scrawny scythe. He looked like a cosplay prop and grinned like a child in a candy shop. He didn't budge. He only cocked his head and said, "You sure about that cut?" "Yes," I said. "Three points to life if I cut here." "Seven points come from hustle," he mumbled back. The nurses snorted. I forced my face back into...
I was fourteen the first time I learned how thin power could be, and how loud a laugh could hide a blade. "My name is India Daugherty," I told the eunuch who led me, because I thought names were like badges. "I am from the Daugherty family in the north. I..." I trailed off. He had already bowed and tucked my hand away like he was putting a coin into a safe. "You will sleep in Yi Hua Pavilion," he said. "Consort Loretta will instruct you. Bow thrice when you meet the Empress." "Bow...
