Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I blew out the candle and told myself, "Happy birthday," like it was a promise I could keep. The phone on the table buzzed and lit the room with someone else's warmth. My boyfriend of eight years called and left a message that practiced kind cruelty: "We need to talk." The last message was an efficient, practiced unburdening — he had a fiancée, and I had been his excuse for years. I fell asleep with the smell of wax and the sound of his goodbye looping in my head. "I swear I will never...
I woke to the taste of smoke and the sound of a door sighing open. My wrists were raw where the cords bit into my skin. A woman in a white dress stepped forward like a judge with perfume instead of robes. "You finally woke up," she sneered. "Funny—you're so calm now that you're about to die." "Why?" I croaked. "Why betray me? Why tear me down?" "You?" she barked, and the laugh that followed had teeth. "You were never one of us. You were Daddy's charity, a stray he couldn't be proud of....
I remember the night like an electric pinprick under my skin. It was a full moon. The sky was clear. I lay in my bed, curled like an embarrassed child, because of cramps that felt like someone was trying to pull my insides out. I had my phone propped up and was watching a cute comic about a chubby cat to distract myself. "He looks like a marshmallow," I whispered to the dim room. "Want me to bring you a heating pad?" my mom had messaged earlier. I turned back to the comic and hit Send...
I still remember the way Knox shouted at me, loud enough to make the ceramic mug tremble on the counter. "Can you stop fussing with it?" he snapped. "It's just a cat. Just wash it. I'm going to play basketball." "I asked you to hold the shower head," I said, my voice trembling more from surprise than anger. "Just hold it for two minutes." "Two minutes? I told you—" He cut himself off and left the sentence hanging like a broken match. "Knox," I said, quieter, "it’s not about two...
I remember the club lights like a confession: red, green, the kind that made everyone look a little less real and a lot more dangerous. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" my friend whispered once, but I already had my phone hidden, my badge tucked into my purse, and a plan to disappear for three hours. I had been a law intern long enough to love a case and hate an empty life. I needed a night that was mine. "I am sure," I told her. "Three hours. No one...
I remember the cave like a dirty secret under the garden rockery: damp stones, a slit of light, and a man whose breath smelled like iron. They had clapped a cloth over my face, but someone—someone small and quick—had blocked the blade before I even felt the pain. "Don't make a sound," the man had hissed. His voice was low, like a broken bell. "One whisper and—" He sharpened the threat into the night. I was eight then, though everyone at the manor called me the second miss, and I thought...
I still remember the thunder like an opening note, the rain as if it were a curtain falling down on my plans. "Don't be discouraged, there will be other chances," Torsten Brown said, his hand on my shoulder as if he were a kindly uncle. "I know," I answered, my voice flat. "But this one was supposed to be Barcelona." He smiled, practiced and warm. "Whether it's funded or self-paid, it's for learning. Be patient, Isla." "Isla," I repeated to myself, tasting the word like a coin that...
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 married Henrik Brennan. "That's the truth?" my friend asked over steaming noodles. "You? Married? Like, legally?" "Yes," I said. "Legally." I lifted the chopsticks with hands that trembled more than I wanted. "But it's not what you think." "It never is," she said, and laughed. Three months before, I had broken up with someone bland and safe. "We should break up," I had said, and meant it. He was a placeholder my mother liked. He was polite enough to stay. He was a man you could...
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 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...
Half a year ago I found out my husband was cheating. "I bought this for him." My voice trembled as I handed our son the small wrapped box that looked like a toy camera. "Happy birthday." He—Donovan Black—smiled like a man who'd practiced tenderness in a mirror. He was good at the gestures that make people believe. He said, "One more year, be a man with responsibility." Our son ripped paper with the wide, trusting eyes of a child. Donovan knelt and showed him how to set up the GoPro,...
I woke up to darkness and a weight across my hips, and for a second I thought the floor had turned into sea. Then my hand found skin and the world made a different kind of sense: warm, slow, breathing. "Who is—" I started, and my voice came out thin. A hotel lamp clicked on somewhere; a strip of weak light painted the man beneath me. He looked like a photograph come to life: black eyebrows, a nose that would photograph well from any angle, lips that might have been carved for a movie...
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 never expected a rainy Wednesday to change everything. "I saw them," Cara said into the phone when she called. "At the mall. Your boyfriend. With Fraser's niece." "What?" I pushed the phone away and then grabbed it again. "No. You're joking." "I'm not. Kadence, look outside—" "I can't, Cara. I'm already—" I didn't finish. I had already decided to go. I told Aldo I'd meet him and buy a gift for my friend. He told me work pulled him away. I went to the mall alone. When the sky...
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 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 am Sofia Duncan. I was born into the Duncan household with an embroidered name and a measured step. I learned how to make my hands gentle and my face still. I stitched a wedding robe for a year — the phoenix wing cut into silk, each feather a small oath. That robe was the proof of a future no one doubted. "Why do you stare at that sparrow?" the nanny scolded the day I was halfway through a feather. "Your phoenix will be outside in the palace." "I like the sparrow," I said. "It flies...
I never planned to become a planner of ruin. I planned for a quiet life. I planned for city office hours, for the children's laughter, for New Year dinners that smelled like soy and ginger. Then everything changed on a snowy New Year's Eve. "Come, sit," my aunt said, patting the wooden chair beside her. Her voice was soft when guests were near, sharp when the room emptied. "Sit where?" I asked. "You and June must understand," she said, looking around to make sure no one watched....
"I told you once," I said, "don't call her my sister in front of people." "I didn't," Frances answered with that thin, soft voice of hers. "You always make things so dramatic, Sylvie." "Then stop taking everything that isn't nailed down." She smiled like a child who had just found candy. "But I like shiny things. And I like good stories." "I liked Dalton," I said. "You liked him until he became mine," she said, false innocent. "That's different." The knife in my chest was not...
