Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 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 remember the promise like the warm weight of a ring on my finger. "Harrison said he'd give me a proper wedding," I told the mirror, tying a ribbon at the back of my hair. "He said he was sorry he never did before. He said I would be the most beautiful bride." "You're already beautiful, Vera," Faith said, squeezing my shoulder from behind. She had come early to help; she was always early when life tilted. "Don't worry. It'll be perfect." I smiled because the mirror wanted it of me and...
I never planned to be a hero. I planned to hide, eat, and sleep—do nothing more than keep living comfortably in a building I had just inherited. "I am not going outside," I told the air, and then I opened another bag of instant noodles. "It's a good plan," Edison Robertson said from the doorway. "For now." I am Jemma Kristensen. I owned a big old building with an eight-floor layout: store on the ground floor, my home on the seventh, and empty floors in between. I had spent a small...
I count the petals one by one. "Happy anniversary," the florist boy says when I open the door. He holds out a small bouquet, nine white roses caught in fragile paper. "Thank you," I say, and the roses go into the vase like something borrowed. White roses are delicate. White roses belong to my sister, not to me. Jordan loved white roses. The phone on the table buzzes with a number I had once memorized for ten years. I let it ring three times before I text back, "On my way." "Mrs....
"I love Karter," I said in the empty room, watching my hand hold the wine glass like it was a mirror. "You always say that," Karter Rahman answered without looking up from his drink. "Because I do," I said. "Because he has the same eyes." Karter's laugh was small. "Same eyes as who?" "You know." He put his wine down and touched the faint marks on his neck. "Someone got carried away." "You were the one who wanted variety," I told him, smiling and pouring my wine over his face....
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 killed myself. On New Year’s Eve, when families were together and the city glittered with fake warmth. I thought death would be silence and relief. Instead, I stood beside my own body and a thin man in white and paper asked my name. "What’s your name?" he asked, flipping a long book like a bored librarian. "Gillian Bird," I said. I wanted him to take me away, to file my name and let me be done. I wanted to sleep forever. He looked at the book. He frowned. "You have years left....
I am pretending to be Isla Amin. I said those words to myself like a prayer and like a lie at once. "You are Isla now," I wrote on paper the first night under the bridal canopy. "You must not speak." Arden Fontaine pushed the bridal curtain aside with one steady hand. He looked like a portrait come alive—too handsome to be real, too calm to be harmless. I almost said it—"He's beautiful"—but the costume would have collapsed. I was the stand-in bride; I had to keep my mouth shut. Arden's...
"I can't believe he accepted her," someone hissed nearby, sweet venom in every syllable. "After all the waiting? The ceremony? How dare she stay?" another voice chimed. I smiled, only a small, flat smile. "Let them talk," I told myself. "They say she begged at the gate for seven nights," a woman snorted. "She only wanted his closeness. Everyone knows the Celestial Lord's weakness is beauty." Their words were knives, but they were not new. I had come from a world that already showed...
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...
He rode away at fifteen and I spent the same years inside the temple. "He went to fight for the realm," I told the monks, "and I will keep him safe with prayers." "I am Diane Devine," I told myself in the dark halls of Qilin Pavilion, tracing the carved roof beam with a finger. "He will return to me," I whispered into the incense smoke, and the brass bell answered with a thin, faithful ring. Years later he came back a hero. He came back with armor blackened by war and eyes that met...
"I always wake up in the prince's bed," I said, and laughed too dryly to be proud. "Again?" whispered Ari Lane from the corner, spoon clinking against porcelain. "Again," I answered, and let my voice be small. "Again, and again." "You are number ten," Caroline Roy said bluntly, folding the letter she'd been pretending to read. "He rotates us. He paints brows, shares meals, listens to poems—and sleeps beside us." "Except he only watches me sleep," I said. "He never touches...
I was born into a house that taught me how to be invisible. "You look fine," my sister said the morning I woke with blood in my eye. Her voice was like dry paper folding over itself. "Fine?" I laughed, and the laugh sounded like a broken bell. "My eye is burning. My sight is going." "Don't overdramatize. It's an infection, it's nothing," Linda Fernandes said as she shrugged in the doorway. "Stop making trouble." "He's the one who did it," I said, and pointed to Colby Martins, who...
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...
I never thought I would say this out loud: I loved him like he was the moon I could never reach. My name is Jazmine Wilson. He was Eliot Wallace. We were young and messy and cruel in the way we loved. "You really came," I said the first time I saw him again at an airport lounge. "Of course I did," Eliot said, not looking around. "You look tired." "You mean like a ruin?" I answered. "Like a book everyone skimmed and then shelved." He smiled the way he always did, slow like a tide....
I had never planned to be mistaken for someone else’s past. I was just selling cats, mopping the floor, counting receipts, and trying to pay my parents’ bills. Then a three-year-old with two tiny hair buns and a face like a peach burst into my shop and called me "Mommy." "Mommy! Mommy!" she shouted, clutching a red apple like a treasure. I froze with my hand on the cash drawer. “I—” I tried to catch her, because she lunged, arms wide. "She grabbed me!" the child squealed as she hugged...
“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 can't believe they're already whispering," I said, turning the ring on my finger until it made a faint clicking sound. "Let them whisper," Eldridge replied, as if his voice could smooth every crack. "They only see what they want to see." "Do they know what they want to see?" I demanded, half-laughing, half-annoyed. "Because their imagination is doing overtime." "You look tired," he said, and then he did something small that made my heart stutter — he reached and brushed a stray hair...
I was memorizing a block of palace lines on my balcony when Lawson called. "Claire, are you home?" he asked. His voice was low and flat, like someone who had been drinking. I put the script down. "Yes," I said. "Are you okay?" "Just come open," he said without explanation. I unlocked the door. Rain had started. Lawson came in without an umbrella, his suit wet, hair sharp at the edges despite the weather. He smelled of cold rain and stronger things. "Did you drink?" I asked. He...
