Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I remember the first peach blossom like a promise I made to myself. "You always climb too high," Salvador Werner laughed, shading his eyes to watch me teeter among the branches. "Don't tumble down." "I won't," I told him, though I was the kind of girl who did tumble and then laughed about it. He only smiled and kept writing lines of law at his desk. I kept climbing. Later that quiet summer day, when my foot slipped and I fell, someone's hands closed around me. He had a face like the...
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...
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 turned my phone off and laughed at myself in the dark. "You're absurd," I told the empty living room. "I thought he'd at least answer once." The balcony glass showed the city lights, and I killed the last lamp. I did not want my home to pretend to be one of those warm families tonight. I packed in silence. "I'll be gone by dawn," I whispered to the lock. When the taxi door shut, I tapped out a message I knew would be read: "Three o'clock at the registry. Bring the ring,...
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 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 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...
June 9th, day three of the outbreak. The classroom smelled of sweat and fear. Desks had become barricades. Curtains shut out the light. Forty-one faces stared at me like I held the day's only verdict. "I have one sip of water left," Linnea said, voice small. "If anyone really needs—" Belen stood and grabbed the bottle. "Stop fussing," she said. "We don't share with charity cases." I remembered every shove, every insult. I remembered the notes pushed into my bag, the laughs when I...
I woke to a gust of night wind slapping my face like a cold hand. "Senior—" came a small voice, and a long shadow filled my doorway. "Why is the lantern not lit?" I muttered, squinting. "Senior Lexi," the little figure said, breath visible in the darkness. "I have a treasure to show you." She stood there with hair messy, pale as if she'd swallowed frost. In her tiny hand she held a long sword like a stick. She looked exactly as she did in daylight: too earnest, too bright. That made...
"I opened my eyes." I sat up so fast the room spun. Light came through heavy curtains. Lavender scent filled the air. I touched my face. Clean. Whole. I was in a bed that did not smell like rot. "Emersyn, you awake?" Brantley Bauer's voice came from the door. "I am," I answered. My throat was raw, but my voice came out steady. I had a name now: Emersyn Bender. It fit the new life that had slid into my chest. "Good. Take it slow." Brantley bowed and left the door open. I swung my...
I still remember the flight number burning on the boarding pass, the storm that pushed us back, and the way the world narrowed to the small, persistent voice in my head that said I would propose at midnight. "I'll be waiting," Ellie said earlier that week. "Don't be late," I told her. "I'll make it worth the wait." The plane touched down at three in the morning. My phone lit up before the cabin lights came on—the caller ID was a name I had not seen for four years: Ellie...
The first breath I remember was thunder. "I was supposed to be dead," I told the maid who wrapped me in blankets in the small room off my father's study. "You were," she whispered, and then she let her hands tremble. "But the midwife said—there's a mark on your face. A tear mole. She said it means—" "That I survived," I finished. I let the word sit like a stone in my mouth. "That I came back." My name is Angelica Barrett. My mother was the daughter of the chancellor. My father is...
I never expected a single rose to change everything. "It’s a holiday," Frank said, voice greasy. "Why are you rushing home, Jaina?" I kept my umbrella tight, rain slicing down in thin lines. The street smelled like oil and old noodles, and the city lights blurred beyond the windshield. He leaned forward, trying to touch my shoulder. I scooted away. "Don't," I said. "Please." He laughed, a wet sound. "You don’t need to be so cold. Come have dinner. We'll celebrate." "I said no,...
I never liked being told what I should be, but when Lawson Best called it quits because "we're not the same kind of people," I didn't expect him to pack his pride and run straight into someone's arms for a house. "Five-in-one, the Four Comprehensives, rural revitalization—do you know what these mean?" his message read, as if quoting a textbook to punish me. "What's that?" I answered, because the only five things I was interested in were good shoes, good food, good gossip, good sleep, and...
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 woke to the sound of steel and the smell of blood. The wall below me was a painting of chaos: soldiers like shadows, the ground a map of bodies, and smoke blotting the sky. My hair was the same color it had always been — the color of winter wheat — but my heart felt hollow and ancient. “I remember everything,” I said to no one, pressing my palm to the carved lintel. “I remember the poison. I remember the paper in his sleeve. I remember jumping and swearing to bury the world with my...
I do not begin with panic. "No," I say, and my voice is level, "keep going. Don't break custom for me." "Keep going?" Quincy Kristensen's fingers, which are cold as carved ivory, close on the silk at my face. He pulls the red veil away like he is tearing a curtain from a stage. "You should not," someone murmurs in the hall, a hush spreading like incense smoke. "Why not?" Quincy asks, and he looks at me as if he has just read a mistake in a ledger. I lift my chin. "Because the...
I signed the papers because he told me to. "Sign them, Daniela," Lane Hudson said with the same calm voice he used when he closed deals. "Two townhouses, a duplex downtown, ten million in cash. Is there anything else?" I looked at the papers. My hand shook and I thought of the years I had tried to warm a man who never wanted warmth. I thought of the red marks on my neck I couldn't explain away. "You think this settles it?" I said. "You think money erases humiliation?" Lane's eyes were...
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 was always louder than I needed to be. "I am Autumn Garcia," I said to the little camera in the campus square, tilting my head, smiling the kind of smile that had taken me centuries to practice. "Why not? Why shouldn't I be?" The student reporter blinked and asked, "Do you think you're the most beautiful student at Southdance University?" "I..." I let my chin dip, let my laugh come out soft. "How could I not be?" "Then what about Bella? What do you think of Bella...
