Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I can still taste the roses." I said it with a laugh that sounded like old wood creaking. "Roses?" Chance tilted his head from the next bunk, eyes wide. "You smell roses in prison?" "I did," I said. "Right before I died. Then I woke up here." "My name's Chance Fisher," he said fast. "I told you already. I'm from the Capitol. How long have you been here?" "Does it matter?" I shrugged and drank another nutri-vial. Chance kept talking. He had so much air in him that he filled...
I signed my name at the bottom of the paper and let the cold wind blow on my fingers. The ink blurred. I let it blur. "I'll be back before dawn," I told my brother when he stood across the courtyard and frowned at me. "It's only the temple, Corbin. I go to pray." "You've been to the temple for three nights," he said. "One night is enough for any worshipper. Come home." "One night won't fix what I'm about to do." I tucked the last piece of candy—brown and sticky—into the corner of my...
I first saw him and I liked him right away. He looked like the person I had held in my heart for years. "I want this," I told him, and I meant it. He smiled like he never smiled at anyone else. I kept that smile in a photo. I kept it under a private setting where only I could see it. "You and I together for three months," he said once with a smirk. "No one I keep around lasts that long." "Then I'm a challenge," I answered, and I meant it. "Don't be ridiculous." He shrugged....
I woke up already knowing I had been assigned the worst supporting-role fate in the book: the doctor’s daughter who only exists to hand the hero a bed, a blanket, and a night of devotion before being forgotten. I remembered the plot line like a scratched record. I remembered the cliff, the immortal healer, and the inevitable procession of beauties that would orbit him. I had been snatched into this world mid-sentence and dropped into a body named Elora Weaver. "I will not be the footnote," I...
I flipped a coin on a kitchen table that smelled like old tea and sterilized bandages. "I'll go if the ship side shows," I told the air. "Heads—I'll go. Tails—I'll stay." The coin spun. I watched it like I watched people's faces for a living: searching for truth in a small, turning thing. "It landed heads," I said to the photograph of Mom. My voice was thin. "So I go." The contest poster on the square had promised a first prize of fifty million star-credits, plus room and board from...
"I still have to ask—are you even able to walk?" I said. "You look like you could run a marathon," he replied, and his hand tugged my sleeve so gently that I stumbled forward and had to grab the railing. The tug wasn't rough, but his eyes had a weight to them that pinched my chest. "I—" I stopped myself. "Who knew life liked pulling jokes." "Who are you talking about?" he asked. "It feels like the world keeps recycling the same faces," I said, and tried to laugh it off. "I...
"I’m a flower," I told him. He looked at me as if I’d said something normal. He tilted his head, the brown coat at his shoulders rustled, and for a second his face was blank as a sky without clouds. "You're a what?" he asked, carefully. "I’m a flower that’s about to wither," I said. "Can I be planted in your pot?" He blinked. I blinked back. The elevator hummed; our skin smelled like elevator air and the faint soap of his coat. I sat down right on top of him with a rubbish flourish...
I woke up with someone else’s life in my head and a crown of trouble on my shoulders. “Estella,” the mirror announced in a voice that was all silk and chill, “you are a princess with enemies.” The voice was mine and not mine. I blinked at the porcelain reflection and found lips that did not belong to a laundress from my old life. I found silk where my old rough shirt had been, and a memory of being both spoiled and feared. “I—what happened?” I whispered to myself. “Now isn’t the...
I woke in the middle of the night because of a pressure I couldn't ignore. I reached, instinctively, to swing my right leg off the bed and then bit down on my own tongue because a sharp pain shot up from my calf. "Ow—" I mouthed, but the sound died in the dark. I felt dampness spread under me. My face heated like I'd swallowed the sun. "Call the nurse," I croaked, hands trembling as I hit the alert button. Footsteps came after what felt like ten slow minutes. The door opened and a...
"I need to tell you something." He looked up from the chart like I had interrupted a storm. "What is it?" Marco Tariq's voice was flat, practiced. He'd been my first love, my worst lesson, my stubborn ache for six years. "I’m pregnant. The baby is yours." He blinked, then laughed—too quick, too hollow. "What baby waits six years?" he said. "Are you joking, Molly?" I set the ultrasound report on his desk. The paper trembled between us. "Not a joke," I said. "Not this...
I woke up with a hand where my phone should have been. "Annika? What are you doing?" a sleepy voice said, muffled by the pillow. I bolted upright. Opposite me, under a blanket, a boy was sprawled on the other side of the bed—familiar, too familiar. "Chase?" I croaked. "You're so loud," he mumbled, eyes still closed. "Sister, don't wake me." "Sister?" My voice cracked. "Chase, what on earth—" He groped blindly and pouted. "I'm tired. Let me sleep, Annika." My scalp went cold....
I still remember the little bell over our front door when someone came in. It was a cheap bell, but every time it rang my heart seemed to hop. Today it rang and I was editing a short video for my feed while Colton stood by the doorway with a grown-up expression on his small face, clutching his collection book. "Mom, I'm quizzing you," he said solemnly. "Again?" I sighed, not looking up. He flipped the card book open and pointed to a random Ultraman. "Who is this?" I blinked. "I......
"Since you want to live on someone else’s money, why not come ask me?" I cornered Dalton in his office and, with what I thought was a grand flourish, pulled a campus meal card from my pocket. "Beef pancakes from Cafeteria One. How many do you want? Buy as many as you like. Don't save money on me." Dalton leveled a look at the card, then at me. He was thirty, precise as a ruler, and he taught like a man who measured every pause. "You mean to support me with this?" he asked. "How much...
I never meant to send that message to him. "I just had the worst blind date," I typed to Katelyn, fingers flying. "Old guy, dry as toast. I couldn't even bite." Three seconds later, a new message landed in my phone. A single question mark. I stared. Then my brain did that embarrassing thing where it stacked every mortifying second of my life into a single film. I must have hit "reply all" instead of "send." My cheeks warmed in a way that heat never had before. I stared at the screen...
I remember the wind first—cold and hard, finding its way through a broken church window and straight into my bones. "I can't lose you," I kept whispering into his hair, even as the sirens drew nearer like distant waves. "Please, stay." "Healer, save her—please!" the boy yelled, and his voice cracked the air like a snapped rope. He was still a child in everything but the ruin in his eyes. "Don't cry," I told him, smiling with what little strength I had. "This is my fate. You have to...
I did not expect my court dress to burn the night I was supposed to be crowned. "I will wait outside until dawn," he had said, and then he walked away with the decree. That decree named him governor of the southern garrison, and it took him from the palace and from me. "I want you to be remembered," I whispered into the smoke as I tipped the brazier. The flames swallowed everything on the shelf, and I wondered, not for the first time, whether Zane Gunther—if he ever heard I was dead—would...
I never expected a single dinner to turn the simplest things into a war zone. "I like rough-housing," Alec said from the head of the table, grin too wide. "She likes to hit people. That you still dare to marry her?" "Shut up." I was about to tell him to shut up, but Archer reached over and eased his arm around my shoulders. "Maybe I'm just good enough," he said, smiling where men usually kept poker faces. "My sweetheart only gives me kisses." Alec's face went the color of crushed...
I never expected to return home from a nightclub and find the door locked against me. "Open up," I knocked. "It's me." "Who are you?" came Bjorn's voice from inside, dry as winter air. "It's Florence." A laugh. "You have Gucci and a Cayenne. Who let you think you can tell me what to do?" I froze. He sounded amused and not—there was a curdled pride in the way he said it. "I bought my things," I managed. Bjorn Schreiber's laugh softened like glass breaking. "Don't make this a...
I married a eunuch. "You're so lucky," I told myself when they lowered the veil. "No children, no fights over heirs, only him and his kindness." "Is she really happy about it?" someone whispered behind the silk curtains. I heard it like a pebble dropped into a pond. "Of course," I said, and smiled till someone might have thought I'd been born with a grin stitched on my face. When Deacon Johansen lifted my veil, I tried to make my pleasure obvious without being foolish. "Am I too...
I was listening to a voice message from a new flirt when I saw him: Oliver Stephens, my ex, behind a half screen in the clinic, white coat on, very composed. "Where does it hurt?" he asked the patient with the same calm I remembered. I swallowed. I had dressed for a date later, picked an outfit in my head, but I came to the clinic in sweatpants and no makeup because of errands. I hated feeling vulnerable. "Should've worn heels," I told myself. A nurse called, "Number sixty-nine,...
