Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I had been married three years and still had no child. "You've been married three years?" A voice in the garden said, warm and conspiratorial. "Three years no heir — you should pay attention." "I am paying attention," I answered. "But he does not like me." They exchanged looks. "Then be clever, Lenore. Be clever." Lenore. They called me Lenore Smith now, though I never had a surname that felt like mine. I had been raised by the Crown Prince as if I belonged to his household, and...
"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 remember the first time I realized Deacon Blevins liked my sister more than me. "Small miss cries ugly," he said once, crouching by a lantern stand as if it were the truest fact in the world. I wiped my hands on my skirt and glared at him. "Who told you that?" He smiled with a devil in it, not a bad smile, and answered, "Your sister is beautiful." That should have been a small thing. It was only a few words, only a tone. But I kept hearing them for days afterward, like a pebble...
I remember the first night they closed the coffin lid and locked it from the outside. I remember the smell of lacquer and the heavy quiet, like a room holding its breath. I remember the old nursemaid's hand, rough and warm, squeezing mine until the knuckles whitened. "You relax, little wife," Guadalupe Jorgensen said into my ear. "He was a good boy. He will like you." "He will? He is a skeleton," I whispered back, and my voice shook in a way I hadn't planned. "He's a skull. Who likes a...
I was raised as the only daughter who mattered. The palace always felt like my skin—tight, familiar, protected. I learned early how the silk rustled, how footmen timed their bows to my laughter, how my father, the Emperor Cruz Roux, would incline his head just so when I entered a hall. They told me I was loved without measure. Then one spring, they carried another girl into the palace and called her "returned." They called her Isabelle Vieira. They put her in gilded robes and named her...
"I never wanted to go back," I said, and the words came out thin like breath. "Melissa, she's family," Dad answered, already reaching for the excuse he'd used a hundred times. "Callahan helped me when I was a kid. We go." "Helped you?" I repeated. "Are you really going to hear that and not think twice?" Dad frowned but smiled like he was placating a child. "Carter Francois doesn't hold grudges. We go for thirty minutes, have the wedding rice, then back." "Thirty minutes," I said,...
I never thought a single apartment key could feel like a tiny blade of freedom, but when I turned it and stepped into my own cramped unit for the first time, I felt something rip inside me — a quiet anger and a clear plan. "You're really doing this?" Fabian asked that morning, looking at the two cardboard boxes in the living room like they belonged to someone else. "Yes," I said. "I'm taking the room. It's close to my office. It'll be easier." Fabian looked at his mother as she sat at...
I wake up with the taste of iron in my mouth and a memory like a broken film reel: a crash, a jail cell, a cheap leather bag thrown at my face, a delivery of a bright university letter that wasn't mine. I close my eyes and count heartbeats. The room around me is the same as it was the first time I woke into this life: sunlight crosshatching through thin curtains, a poster on the wall with a math formula someone once circled, the old wooden desk where I learned to copy answers and keep...
"We're done." I said it flat, like ripping a bandage, and watched Greyson's face freeze the way glass does when you throw a stone at it. "What?" Greyson Bond sounded small. "Why now?" "You know why." I tapped my glass with a fingernail because my hands wanted to shake and my mind wanted to bargain. "This was never more than a ladder for me. It ends here." Greyson swallowed. "You can't mean that—" "I do." I leaned in. "Don't come after me." Someone laughed behind us. I didn't...
I woke up to blood. "I turned the tap to wash my face," I said once to no one, "and red came out instead of clear." It started like a small absurd joke, the kind that can either make you laugh or make you panic. I laughed in the bathroom mirror, because I had to. My white shirt hung on the chair, my black shoes sat like two dark promises by the door. I reached for the towel I had used the night before and rubbed at my face. The scent that rose was wrong, like iron and old paper. "You...
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 woke up at 5:30 a.m. to pounding on my door. "Leticia!" a voice barked. "The toilet's clogged. Go check it!" I pulled the quilt over my head and laughed out loud at the absurdity. "Why me?" I said, but the voice kept coming. "You live next door. Help me!" I swung my legs out of bed and opened the door. An old woman in a red sweater stood there, breath coming in short, sharp pants. Her face was all wrinkles and impatience. "Why are you banging on my door at five in the morning?"...
I knew the exact chapter and paragraph where I was supposed to kneel, beg, and die. "Clayton—no, Emperor Fielding," I mouthed under my breath as the carved beams above me watched. "You have read the same book as I did." "Camilla Simpson," the Emperor intoned from the dragon throne, "Jiang household is cruel, immoral, and plotting to murder the heir. Take her away." I had been reading last night. I had, against my better sense, finished this particular guilty-pleasure novel. I knew the...
1 "I told them I'd rather wear pajamas than a dress," I said, tugging at the wrinkled cotton of my sleep shirt as if the fabric could prove my honesty. "You're serious?" Jamie laughed, leaning closer. "You actually showed up like that?" "I showed up like this." I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead. "And he—he was in a suit. An actual suit. Sebastian Delgado." "He sounds expensive," Jamie said, eyes wide. "Like movie-expensive." "When he smiled, I thought someone edited...
I died, and Avery Wagner did not believe it. "He can't be serious," I heard Abel whisper, but the words were muffled by the distance between my ribs and his shoes. Avery laughed in the doorway. "What, another stunt? She always loves a dramatic finale." "She is not playing," Abel said. "Bring the certificate." Avery snorted. "A certificate? Come on. This is getting old." Abel put the paper on the table like it was an accusation. "This is her death certificate." "Sure," Avery...
"I did not push you." The voice was thin, tired. I heard Kayleigh laugh as if she had already won. "You were always clumsy, Ari," she said. "You thought the prince would save you. What a joke." I stumbled back toward the cliff edge. My palms slid on damp stone. My chest knocked against the wind. Behind Kayleigh, guards waited like statues. In front of her, Prince Gavin Dean moved with a calm that ate the air. "Kayleigh—" Gavin's voice softened. "Are you all right?" Kayleigh fell...
They call me Dahlia Turner now in the papers; once I had a name in someone else’s heart. "I thought you were asleep," he said that night, rolling his hand around the edge of the pillow like a man who thinks he owns time. "I was," I answered, because the truth would have taken too long. When I first met Dallas Farrell, it felt like a story written to comfort lonely readers. He brought flowers so extravagantly that our living room looked like a florist's private vault. He remembered...
I remember the subway falling into a kind of hush that felt like a held breath. I remember my phone’s green glow painting strangers’ faces in sickly light. I remember a small green dot slipping from the screen, through my forehead, and into my head. “System: detected host. Soul binding initiated,” a flat voice said inside my skull. “Who are you?” I asked out loud, though no one in the dark train answered. “I am Trial Deity Support System 001. Hello, Master Jaylene Meyer,” it...
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 remember the night they forced me under the embroidered veil as if I were a thing to be placed on a shelf. "Open your face, Ginevra Silva," Laurent Belyaev said, cold as winter. "Now that you've come to our Greatcourt, learn our rules. Don't drag your barbarian ways into our halls." He spoke as though I had begged to come. I bit him. I aimed at his hand, the warm, careless hollow of his wrist, and bit hard. He stared, stunned. I scrambled onto the bed and shoved myself into the...
