Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I can't believe you stuffed a duffel like that into the hallway." I said, slurring just enough to make my point weak and theatrical. Tyler didn't even blink. He closed the bag's zipper with a soft click and looked at me like he owned the quiet in the apartment, like he owned the seconds between heartbeats. "Bubble gum," he said. "Bubble gum?" I scoffed and made a face. "Wholesale?" "Personal," he answered simply. I stared at the pile of rubber-wrapped things and then at him. In my...
I woke with my hand burning and a maid kneeling on the floor, her face the color of shame and fear. "How dare you hit me?" I said, because a princess must look offended even when she is the one who struck first. "I—" the maid stammered. "My lady, forgive me." A man in white walked toward us, his hair neat, his clothes as precise as a soldier's march. He had a pleasing voice and a face people paused to look at. "This is not befitting of a princess," he said politely. I...
01 "I keep the mark," I told myself aloud as I stepped into the palace garden, my palms folded behind me the way a minister's hands are taught to fold—neat, but not soft. "Who goes there? Who dares disturb Her Majesty's walk?" a woman's voice rang sharp as a bell. I saw her before she saw me: a living bloom in bright silk, eyes like polished pebbles and cheeks of fresh fruit. People clustered around her as if the sun had a new favorite. They called her names I had heard before—praise...
I remember the first time someone told me my boyfriend would cut out my kidney for another woman. "You don't understand," Kiley said, chewing gum like she was narrating a movie. "Maybe not now. But the story says — he will. Wait." I put a hand to my side without thinking. "He isn't a CEO. He won't do something like that." Kiley shrugged, eyes sharp. "Doesn't mean he can't be. People change. Or the book changes him. Either way — notice the warning." I laughed too loud. "Who names a...
I was supposed to stay small and useful. I was supposed to be grateful. I was supposed to be invisible. "Jillian, come here." When I opened the apartment door, his voice filled the foyer like a command. Adriano Dawson sat on the leather sofa in the living room. A woman with waved hair and red lipstick curled into him. Her name was Dior Petersen; she smiled like someone who never feared consequence. He had his right arm around her waist. They were close, breath close enough to...
I remember the first time I saw her in the light of the palace courtyard. She was a small, bright shape in peach silk, and the whole court seemed to slow to let her pass. "Your Majesty, this is my sister," our mother said, and her smile softened in a way I had not seen in years. "Come, meet your elder sister," she added, as if that could cover ten years of absence and a dozen secret lessons. I stepped forward and held the girl's hand. "You are unexpectedly lovely," I said. "Peach hues...
"I saw a new video from Noah George." The notification blinked on my phone like an invitation. I tapped it without thinking. I had followed Noah for years; his food videos were my quiet place. The screen opened to a dim basement instead of his usual airy kitchen. A young man in white gloves stood under a low lamp, the light washing his cheekbones into marble. He held a slab of pale meat to his nose and breathed in like someone smelling victory. "Today I'm making crispy pork belly," his...
They pressed my face to the bar sink and the cold water went down my throat. I remember fighting for a breath and feeling someone tighten their hand behind my skull until I thought my skull would cave. "Tonight we meet the Watsons. Don't make me say it twice. Sober up or I will make you sober," he said, calm and ordered like he was making an appointment. His voice cut through the rush of bubbles in my mouth. I choked, lifted my head, and met his face in the mirror. He...
I am Sigrid Aldridge. I married a stranger in a hurry because my family needed bread and because the rain had soaked our fields to mud. I married Flynn Webb because he came with a carriage and because he was quiet and handsome and because he promised a roof. I married him and slept beside a body that had a face like a poem—and a soul I could not read. The first night he lifted my veil, I felt the air change. He had the kind of thin smile that could be taken for kindness, and the kind of...
I stepped into the private room and the room swallowed the noise like a mouth. "Is this the right room?" I asked, because the melody was still in the air and the faces were a little older now. "Yes," someone at the table laughed. "Svetlana Hill. You finally showed." "Long time," I said. I closed the door and let them look. "They all looked," I thought. "Some stared longer than others." "Where have you been?" Li, the old class rep, asked. He banged the table with a grin. "You...
I still remember the exact time my phone vibrated the day everything changed. "He's posted," Jazmin said from the other side of the room, her voice thin with private glee. "Don't open it," I told her without looking up. "You have to." She shoved her phone toward me. I opened my feed. A photo—Camilo smiling at a girl whose face the frame only showed in profile. He looked like he always did in photos: calm, like a boy who had never been rushed. The caption read, "Three years. Only...
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It hit like a wall when I turned the kitchen tap: copper and iron, thick and wrong. I flicked the handle and watched dark red water coil down the drain. "Maverick?" I whispered. A hand clamped my mouth before I could scream. His palm was warm. His voice was low, pressed to my ear. "Don't make a sound. They're out there." He smelled of the morning—mint and soap—and of something else I couldn't name. He had a white shirt on that had not been...
The cake sat on the coffee table, frosting sweating into soft rivers of white. I had bought it with my own hands the day before and carried it home in a box that smelled faintly of sugar and the plastic bag it came in. I had put it where Fisher would find it when he came back to celebrate our three-year anniversary. "He said he'd be five minutes," I muttered, staring at the crest of a soft strawberry, watching the cream droop. The clock hands moved like lazy fish. The cake sank. I watched...
I told my mother, "Finnian has been seeing someone." She didn't wait for me to explain. "Finnian? No way. He looks so steady. Don't be silly." "I mean... there is another woman," I said, blunt and quiet. My mother blinked, then flared: "What will you do? Divorce? Where will you live?" "I was joking," I lied and stood. Her voice pushed words into me like a tide. I left while she scolded the air. The street crowded around me, everyone with places to be, and I felt like the only one...
"I took the glass from his hand." I said it before I felt it. My fingers closed around cold glass, and all the noise in that private room slowed to the sound of my own breath. "Don't drink," I told him. "Not tonight." He didn't look at me. Sebastian Fontaine kept his smile with a woman folded into his arm like a prop. He looked at the woman and laughed, like I was air. "Julia," he said once, as if that was enough. "I am not your ghost," I answered. I put the glass on the...
"I can't breathe!" I hooked my toes, pushed against cold river mud, and the world tilted. "Kayla! Save our child!" someone shouted from a distance. The name hit me like a punch. Kayla? That was my name now. Not mine, the other one. I kicked. I surfaced, coughing river water, and spat until my throat stung. "Griffin, hurry!" a plump woman shrieked in a voice that sounded decades older than anything I knew. I blinked at faces. They wore rough cloth and short jackets. A red sun burned...
I died in a lake with the taste of salt and metal in my mouth, and the last thing I remember was Lincoln Carter saying, "You're disgusting, Collins — you don't love yourself." Then I floated above the water and watched my whole life play like a cruel movie. "I gave them everything," he had said, light as a feather. "Why would I waste a future on someone who doesn't value herself?" I watched him at the funeral acting like a gentle, broken boyfriend. I watched my grandmother, Adelaide Dunn,...
I never imagined a stupid dare could change the whole shape of my life. "Hailey, you have to do it," Leighton said, eyes bright like she'd swallowed three sodas and a secret. She curled a strand of hair around a finger, doing that dramatic thing friends do when they want you to be their entertainment. "I am not confessing to Greyson Barrett," I said, which was true and also foolishly theatrical. "He's not that scary," Emilia said, smirking. "He's just tall, handsome, and runs half the...
They told me I should cry in the dark and write my own obituary. "I don't write obituaries for people who are still breathing," I said. "No?" Jen Saleh blinked, quiet for once. "Then—then should I tell Mr. Hudson you're not seeing him?" "Tell Finn Hudson he's not welcome." I watched the secretary leave with a little skip in her step, like she'd handed off a secret she liked to keep. The office was bigger than most small towns. The floor-to-ceiling windows framed the city like a...
I never expected to find trouble in an empty classroom, and I certainly didn't expect it to be shirtless. "Who are you?" I said, though my voice trembled more from staring than from fear. He blinked slowly, like someone waking from a pleasant nap. "You shouldn't be in here. This is our club room." "You're the one who's not wearing a shirt," I shot back. He smiled then, and it landed somewhere like a physical thing inside my chest. "Is that your excuse?" I should have left. I...
