Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 can't believe I ran into the wrong classroom." I was breathless, skirt stuck to my knees, hair a mess, and my face bright red like I had sprinted through the sun. People stared. A teacher peered at me. "You're late," she said. "Sorry. Transfer student. Wrong room," I said, trying to bend words around my pounding heart. They clapped because the teacher asked me to introduce myself. I said what new girls always say—where I'm from, what I like, a polite bow. Then she pointed to the...
I turned twenty-eight on a rainless Monday and made a small wish into the dark ceiling of my one-room apartment. "I wish for one different life," I whispered, "one strange trip. Just once." A light like a camera flash hit my eyelids and a soft voice answered, "Granted." "I—" My last thought was the shape of a glowing bubble, the size of a marble, humming at my breath. Then black. When I opened my eyes again, the bubble floated in front of me and said, "I am the Wish System. The...
I remember the snow that day like a white shout across the world. "Your Majesty, the princess—" Octavio White began, and everyone in the hall shifted like trapped fish. "She must be married before the year turns," my father, Emperor Abraham Elliott, said. "A good match will settle the house." "Good matches are rare, sire," Galen Evans muttered from where the generals clustered. "Even rarer is a man who will meet the princess on equal footing." "It is settled, then," the emperor...
I remember the dust the way some remember a face. It stuck to my lips and to the inside of my mouth until every word tasted like sand. The third drought had ended half the fields and most of the names in our village. We left in a long snake of bundles and fear. People talked about water like it was a rumor—like some promise that might not come true. "I won't give her away for less than a sack," the butcher said, pushing the girl with the rope. "Half a sack, take it or leave it." "Half a...
I've had a crush on my desk mate for three years. "I've written books with him as the hero," I say, folding my hands around a warm drink. "Every main character looks exactly like Romeo." Danna Lopez laughs and nudges me. "Only you would write fan fiction with a classmate as the lead." She never speaks that in public, but tonight she does. Romeo Evans sits across the table, sleeves rolled, looking clean and calm like always. He is the kind of person whose face makes other faces go home...
I woke in river water and the world felt wrong and right at the same time. "Where am I?" I kept my eyes half-closed and tasted mud and metal on my tongue. A cold, slick head coiled over my wrist. "You're not alone," it seemed to say. I scrubbed water from my face and stared at my hands. They were clean—small, pale, a city woman's hands, not the scarred, callused hands I remembered. Memory slammed into me all at once: a battlefield, a blast of heat, the smell of burned grass; then my...
"I can smell fish." The dark grass rustled under my hands as I pushed myself up. My mouth was dry. My head was a mess of pain and other people's memories like a broken film. I blinked into the night and the smell hit me — warm, sharp, and impossible to ignore. "Fish?" I whispered. "Yes. Fish." They had left me tied to a tree. I had been left to die. "Who would leave a woman here?" a voice muttered, low and amused. I had been doing one thing well in my old life: closing other...
I arrived before dawn, as usual. The antique lane smelled of cold tea and old wood. Stalls were still half-closed. I spread out a plastic sheet, weighed its corners with battered textbooks, and set the carved chrysanthemum stone in the center like a small, quiet kingdom. "You're early," the stall owner across the way grumbled without looking up. "I'm always early," I said, pretending the math problems on my lap were more interesting than the street. A dozen years of being small taught...
"I promise me no special treatment," my father said the night before I left for training. "You won't," I said, folding the paper he handed me. "You'll blend in. From the people, back to the people," he added, more serious than when he taught me to thread a needle. "I know." I tucked the UV allergy note into my backpack like it was a secret charm. "No special treatment." He huffed. "Don't make me come down there." "Don't worry," I lied, grinning. "I won't make you ruin your diet...
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...
"My sister is dead." "I know," I said. "I just... I just got a text from her phone." "Owen?" I heard a small voice from the hallway. "Are you sure?" "No, I mean—" My voice cracked. I pressed the phone screen until the dim light blurred. The message sat there in a plain bubble like a bone: three lines, nothing more. "Be careful of people in red clothes." "You can eat what Mom prepares, but if you find teeth, nails, hair or other human bits, don't tell Mom." "Be home before ten....
I found the script folded under a glossy magazine and smiled at the opening line: “They loved each other once, then years of misunderstanding pulled them apart, but distance never erased the memory.” “Lucia?” Madison Sauer’s voice buzzed through my phone. “They just told me—you’re on the shortlist.” “Really?” I could hear my own hand tapping against the coffee cup. “For Best Actress?” “Yes. Don’t freak out. Half an hour. We have a dinner tonight.” Madison didn’t sound happy. “Be...
Tonight I drank more than I meant to. Tonight I had a plan. "I want him," I told the empty room, and laughed at myself. I had lived with Ely for months. He was my flatmate, the kind of man who left laundry immaculate and cut charts of his week like they were treasure maps. He smiled too little, read too much, slid into kindness like it cost him nothing. He was handsome in a way that hurt your eyes if you looked too long. He was good at everything. He was hard to take. So I got tipsy...
I am Marina Bentley. I read the book, I loved the sad man, and I thought saving him would be simple. Then everything went wrong in the very first night of my marriage. "Lift the red veil," they said in the hall, and when the silk fell I looked at Dion Olson and thought: he is exactly like the book—quiet, pale, proper, with a face carved by slow winters. "May I offer a cup?" he said softly. "I—" I started, and then he said it. "I am told I have lived before," he said. "I loved you...
Sometimes it takes a tiny act of courage to pull something out of your chest. Sometimes it's the courage to hand over a hidden bouquet, or to speak a shy sentence that bowls the whole room over. I had courage enough that night, and I did something worse: I gave away a secret. "Happy eighteenth," Gabriella said, holding out a glass box. "I thought you might like this." Her fingers were cool. Her smile was small and full of careful light, like a lamp kept on low in the corner of a...
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 need you to stay very still.” I pushed the thin silver needle between Sterling’s shoulder blades. He made a small sound, half complaint, half surprise. “You don’t have to tell me you hate needles,” I said, my hand steady. “Just don’t move.” He blinked at me. “Zoya, you sure you’re not doing this to flirt?” “I don’t flirt with rich men who try to buy hospitals,” I said. Sterling Barrett’s breath hitched. He had the look of a man who was used to getting his own way and then...
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...
