Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I remember the heat first, the way the courtyard stones steamed under noon like a lid on a pot. I remember how the sky slid from bright to bruised in an hour, how thunder arrived like an order. I remember Kenji Amin whispering at my shoulder, too small-voiced to iron out the worry in his face. "Your Highness, maybe we should postpone—" Kenji said, ducking his head. "The weather—" "Kenji," I cut him off, amused. "You packed an umbrella yesterday. What else do you want from me?" He...
December came like a verdict. "Ivy, your brother's plane—" the stranger's voice on the phone sounded like a thing I had never met before. It was hollow and polite and cruel. I ran. I ran because there was nowhere else to run. When I pushed open the front door, the house smelled like boiled cabbage and old grief. Dad sat at the dining table with his back to me, shoulders hunched like he had been carved that way. Mom’s hands were pressed into her face, the kind of face I had never seen...
I remember the day my father told me we were rich like it was a strange joke he finally decided to own up to. "There's something I need to tell you," he said at lunch, his face blank as always. "Okay," I replied, pretending not to care. "What?" He pushed a stack of documents across the table with a single flat hand. "You're not poor, Aubree. We kept it from you." "You're joking." I laughed, then I didn't. The papers smelled of official ink and money. There were property...
I remember the sink, the cold hard rim pressing into my hair. The water filled the basin like a small lake, and the last thing I felt was my lungs clench shut. When I came back, someone was standing at the mirror, patting her hair dry and humming as if nothing had happened. "Big sister, I thought you were living so well. I'm disappointed," she said, and the voice in my mouth sounded like someone else's lullaby. "Who are you?" I croaked, but the answer was already moving, warm and...
"I don't want to die," I said, barely louder than the sound of water. Colton Blankenship's shadow filled the doorway long before his voice did. He stood there like a mountain, the hints of candlelight catching the hard planes of his face. His robe hung perfect; his jaw was a map of command. He did not move right away. Instead he listened to the water for a long, patient beat. "Why would you?" he asked finally. "Why say such things in a bathroom, Coraline?" "I—" I swallowed. The bath...
I spat salt water and grit out of my mouth and blinked at a roof that threatened to fall through the sky. "Where am I?" I said aloud, though my throat felt like dry paper. A boy with eyes too old for his face leaned over me with a wooden cup and poured water down my throat. He was five, maybe six, all knees and big, terrified eyes. "You're awake!" he cried. "Sister, you finally woke up." "I—" I pushed the fog from my head. My body ached as if someone had taken strings and jerked...
I opened my eyes to a ceiling that was too close and smelled faintly of disinfectant and cheap perfume. For a sliver of a second I thought I was still backstage at a pageant, but the plaster was wrong, the light was fluorescent, and my hands were soft in a way my fingers never had been before. I touched my face. It was rounder than I remembered. "This can't be right," I whispered to myself. A paper was in my fist—a crumpled school form. I read the name written in neat characters: Lea...
I am telling the story in my own voice. I will not hide how small I felt, how angry I became, and how I let others believe they owned me until the moment I decided they would not. "It is colder than your bones," Tobias said the first night he saw me. "Then warm them," I snapped, but I was too weak for real anger to rise. He lifted my chin with those pale fingers that looked like bone and paint and said, "Smile. Try a smile." I thought: break that finger, make a new umbrella out of...
1 The knock on my door came on the eight hundred and seventh day after we broke up. I opened it because I had to — because the landlord's note was loose on the floor and because curiosity still bit me like a small dog. The man on the threshold looked both familiar and impossible to place. "Tomas?" My mouth made the name before my brain could stop it. He blinked. "Aurora." "You have a nerve." I shut the door partway but didn't push him off the step. The ten square meters of my...
I fell from a tree and into steam. "Welcome, Host 001," a metallic voice chimed inside my head as hot water wrapped me like a trap. "You have bound to the Ravaged Hero System." I spluttered and swallowed a mouthful of sulfur-scented pool water. "What?" "You are in the alternate dynasty of the Northern Realm. The male lead, the Regent Xander Luna, has had his fate siphoned. Change the fate of the original heroine and reclaim the Regent's fortune of life force. Complete the tasks and you...
1 I am Eamon Branch. I graduated law school and took my first criminal case eight years ago. I thought I was going to learn how to argue in court. I did not expect to learn how people survive in a vacuum. "This won't be a dramatic gore case," I told myself when I first read the file. "It will be ordinary, and that is the strange part." It was August. The case was simple on paper: a worker named Marcel Martin was found hanged in dorm room 201 of a construction camp. The arresting scene...
I remember the hotel lights like a confession. The crystal chandeliers at the Ten恒 Grand Hotel threw shards of gold across everyone. They made promises look like coin and sorrow look like glitter. "I don't think they saw me coming," I said, straightening the thin silver pendant at my throat. "You always underestimate your audience," Atticus Thompson answered, leaning in the doorway like a man carved out of law books and late nights. "Or you overestimate their attention span." I laughed...
I woke up wrapped in purple silk, and the first thing I noticed was the sound of horses outside and the smell of wood smoke. My name is Haylee Petrov. A minute before, I was in my bedroom apartment, watching a fashion gala on TV. Now I blinked at a wooden beam, at lacquered furniture, at a paper lantern throwing soft light across a face I didn't know. "Who are you?" I whispered. "Haylee," I answered myself aloud, because the mouth moved and the word tasted like my real name. It felt like...
2008, October 1. "I came back from the sanatorium today," I wrote, because the doctor told me to write. "You are sick," he said. "You need to keep a diary." I looked at the doctor and thought, You are wrong. I am fine. "Write what?" I asked no one. "My mother says, write to the diary," she had told me on the phone. "You don't have to tell everyone. Make the diary know." "So," I told the blank page, "can I write a birthday wish into it?" "My birthday wish," I wrote, "is to be at...
I crushed the cigarette under my shoe and watched the ash fall into the gutter. "I told you to wait in the car," I said without looking up. The driver grunted. "You sure about this, Cullen? He talks smooth." "I like smooth talkers," I said. "They tell you more than they mean." I am Cullen Price. I run a small detective office. I find lost dogs, catch cheating lovers, and sometimes find things people want buried. Hazel Clement—an old woman with a dry throat and steady hands—came to...
I never wanted a court that sang praises and whispered doubts about my private life. I wanted a quiet bowl of porridge, a warm corner, a single promise kept. "When I married you," he had said once, "I will keep only you." I kept that in my chest like a small plum seed, and I tended it. "Wolfgang, we are not as we used to be," Edgar Olson said one afternoon as he folded the morning reports. I had been lying against the cushions, a book half open in my hands, the inked characters blurring...
I run the university confession wall account. I never told anyone. I liked the quiet power of watching other people reveal things and then leave their hearts up there like posters. I liked being a stranger who could pass judgment and bite the popcorn. One night I opened a new message on the admin. It was short: "Senior Jiang, I've liked you for a long time." A single photo came with it—a back turned to the camera. I squinted. I knew that back. I know Antoine’s shoulders when he folds them. I...
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 woke in a dark room and for a stupid, steady second I thought I was late for work. "Where am I?" I whispered. The room smelled faintly of tatami and damp paper. The light was almost gone. I pushed my palm against the futon and felt my own heartbeat. I sat up. A single low lamp on the far shelf revealed a tidy, Japanese‑style guestroom. My clothes were on a chair. My face in the little bathroom mirror was mine. "I'm Nathalie David," I said aloud, mostly to prove I still had a name. "I...
I never planned to start a story with a stolen kiss. "We lost," Lacey said, laughing. "Loser has to plant one on someone of the opposite sex." "Fine," I said, and I looked straight at Canaan. Canaan Morgan blinked, awkward and steady. "We're just friends," he said. I smiled, but it was a small, hard smile. "Friends," I repeated, louder than I meant to. I walked away from Canaan and tapped the closest guy on the shoulder. I meant to shock Canaan. I meant to make him notice...
