Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
“You promised me.” I hear my own voice and it sounds like metal. “I said what?” Isaiah Bonnet asks from the other end, calm as a lake that never moves. “I promised myself I would stop waiting.” I press the phone harder to my ear. “Isaiah, we should get a divorce.” Silence eats the line for a beat. Then he says, “Think it through.” “I have,” I answer. “Three years. Half a marriage. I remember everything now. I remember the rest.” My throat tightens. “I’m done.” He breathes out...
I am terrible at starting fights, and I am worse at finishing them with dignity. "You stole my zongzi, didn't you?" he said, and the whole cafeteria seemed to fold into his voice. "I did not!" I said, which was probably obvious because what kind of thief fights a basketball team over a holiday rice dumpling? I am Gwendolyn Brewer. That morning the campus dining hall was giving away zongzi for Dragon Boat Day. Free food—who can resist? I ran there after class because Jaylin Powell had...
I woke to the city breathing quietly around our villa, the night lights pooling like spilled milk on the glass. I was alone on the sofa, face mask still clinging to my skin, one leg thrown over the coffee table because of habit and because the house was big enough to do anything I liked. My phone buzzed against the cushion. I plucked it up and put it on speaker. "Elaina! Did you see the news? Your husband is trending again!" Sandra's voice was all shriek and flirt and that particular pity...
I never thought a pink rabbit head would redraw my life. "I can't believe you opened her stream," my father said that night, and his laugh smelled of wine and shame. "I told you she was a small channel," my mother mumbled, flipping a tea towel. "But your friends wanted to see." "She looked ridiculous," my father insisted. "Dancing with those ears—" "Ridiculous?" I heard myself say. "Dad, I have a million followers now. That is not ridiculous." "You embarrassed me," he said. "You...
I moved out six months ago because Gordon Jackson slept with someone else. "Marina, are you really okay?" Josie asked the night I told her I was leaving. "I'm fine," I lied, and Josie said, "You sound like my grandmother when she eats lemon pie." I wasn't fine. I taped my heart back together and put it in a cardboard box labeled MOVE FORWARD. I found a tiny apartment in a new building, started a new job as a concept artist at a game studio, and worked insane hours. One late night,...
I never expected seven photos to turn my life upside down. "Did you see the confession wall?" Kiley asked when I walked into the dorm. She was fanning herself with a textbook, dramatic as always. "I saw," I said, trying to sound bored. "Someone keeps posting pictures of me." "Someone?" Mariah squealed from the bunk above. "Which someone? Show us." I pulled my phone out and scrolled. One, two, three—seven photos, each different, each of me with a lollipop in my mouth. "Why would...
"I don't want to be your brother anymore." He had a cigarette between two fingers and a lazy, moonlit face. He leaned me against the cold wall and brushed his fingers along a freckle at the corner of my eye. "Be my girlfriend." "You don't get to say no." I remember the first time I said the word 'brother' to him. Not because I wanted to lie. Because it was the one safe shell I could put myself into. Because in a neighborhood where faces turn away, calling someone family is an...
1 "I always told you: fame is a pendulum," Gloria said the night she moved my life into her huge flat. "You made a mess, I'll clean it up," she added, popping another dumpling into her mouth like nothing had happened. I smiled because she smiled. I packed my broken dream in two suitcases and followed her into the warm glow of her living room. "I didn't think you'd actually do it," I replied. "Do what?" she asked, with that dizzying, open face that had gone from our hometown nights to...
"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 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 am Tatiana Girard. I am a princess. For two days I have almost not eaten. "Princess," my maid Sophia Abbott would whisper every mealtime, "you must try." "I can't," I would answer, lowering my chopsticks for the hundredth time. "Father comes at meal times." "Your father?" she would ask, frowning. "Again?" "Always," I said. "He asks the same thing every time." "He asks you where the Empress is?" Sophia's voice was soft, like cloth sliding. "Yes." I set the bowl down. "Again...
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 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 hung from the beam and waited for the black-and-white specters to take me away. "Come on, little black, little white, drag my soul out!" I waved one hand like a lunatic and grinned. "Ah! A ghost!" The black-and-white ghosts screamed and fled. "…" Later I heard they threw a three-day feast in Hell to celebrate that I had come back to life. I was a fierce ghost. So fierce that even the bureaucracy of the underworld didn't want me. They said my anger was too strong. So I drifted,...
I woke to the sound of a door being shoved and then—after a long, dreadful silence—the heavy slam that closed the courtyard world out and left only the warm, curtained room and my own pounding heart. "You're awfully quiet for a bride," a voice said close beside me. I kept my lips together like a sealed gate. The red silk over me was heavy with embroidered phoenixes; my face was hidden beneath a veil threaded with tiny pearls. I could make out nothing but a pair of red boots by the...
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...
1 The big screen at the gym caught me at the worst possible time. "I—I didn't mean to," I blurted, and the whole crowd laughed like a wave. My face burned so hot I felt it in my teeth. "Sit still," said the boy underneath me. His voice was low. He didn't move an inch. My lace skirt had snagged on the metal stud of his boot. I bent to free it and gravity did the rest: I landed hard on his thigh and my skirt brushed his mouth. The giant screen flashed our faces. The announcer's camera...
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 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 died in a wedding dress, my skin burning like fire, and then I opened my eyes to a world that smelled of tea and rain. "You are dreaming," someone said, but the voice was not kind. "Wake up, Marina." I blinked against white light and the rough face of my maid, Marine Long, leaned over me like a worried bird. Her fingers were warm. The room was small and familiar, a place I had known when I still trusted the world. "Marine?" I said. "Did I—" "You fainted in the rain, miss," Marine...
