Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I never intended to be nice. "I promised you, Annie," I told the mirror, smoothing the skirt that made my waist look impossibly small. "Tomorrow, Damian won't show. Do you hear me? He won't." "Are you sure this is safe?" Annie Novikov asked, poking at the eyeliner case on my dressing table. "You know your father won't like a scene." "I know exactly what I'm doing." I smiled at my reflection. "And if my father tries anything—I'll make it so he eats his words." Annie laughed. "You...
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 picked up the phone because my thumb trembled over the screen. I was about to say hello when a woman's voice came through, low and teasing. "Light. Be gentle, do you hear me?" "Yes…" another voice whispered. My head went blank. "What's happening?" I asked myself out loud. A sound that did not belong to a classroom, a library, or a study session crawled into my ears. It didn't take experience to recognize it. I froze. Tears started on their own. "Who is that?" I...
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 sunlight stabbing my eyes and a panic that felt like a stomach punch. "Where am I?" I croaked, fingers fumbling for the blanket, for my phone, for anything that belonged to me. A tie lay across the bed, a dark smear of last night’s confusion. My head throbbed like someone was hammering inside. I sat up, heart hammering, and the alarm started to ring in my pocket — a classmate calling, an unmannerly reminder of the noon reunion awaiting me. "Chiyo? You coming or what?" Her...
I was in the makeup chair when Daxton Burgess called. "You're back from Shanghai?" I asked into the speaker, letting my voice be soft enough to keep the room calm. "Uh… Ariel, I'm sorry," he said after a pause. "I may not be able to get back for a while." Outside, Kylee Conti and Hank Acosta argued about how to tie the balloons. Kylee's laughter threaded through the studio like a ribbon. Hank's curses sounded like little fireworks. "How long?" I asked. "Maybe… longer than I...
"The door clicked open." "I didn't hear you come in," I said, pushing my wheelchair toward the hallway. "You smell gas again?" Reid Hahn's voice was flat as stone. He stood in the doorway in a raincoat, the rain dripping off his shoulders like nothing mattered. "I forgot the stove," I said. "I will fix it." "You always forget," he said. "Just delete my fingerprint from the lock." "I forgot. I'll do it." My hands trembled but I smiled. Reid didn't look at me. He walked straight...
My father is dead. His body was pulled from our bathroom drain. A grown man's body, crushed into a narrow pipe, the kind of thing that shouldn't be possible. I held the letters he wrote me and found a hidden message stitched across four awkward sentences. "Watch mother." 01 I woke to a noise in the night. Not a creak or the house settling — a soft tapping that sounded like fingernails on porcelain. I slid from bed, the boards cold under my feet. "Hello?" I whispered. My voice...
I never expected the first clue would be his ears. "Cruz, the awards are next," someone said from the stage, and I clapped until my palms tingled. He stood there in black suit and white shirt, jaw cut like a clean line of marble, and I imagined — idiotic, unspooling fantasies — what his apartment would look like, whether he made coffee like a man who could also write annual reports. He looked toward our row. His eyes slid over me — and his ears went pink. I froze. A pink at the ear...
I never wanted to be a villain. The book said I was one, and the book had my fate all tied up: schemer, failure, lonely death. I learned that on my wedding night. "I am Anastasia Krueger," I said aloud to the dim room. "Not 'porridge' or any nickname. Remember that." Roberto Abdullah, my brother, closed his ledger and looked at me like I was a small, stubborn bird. "You should sleep. There is court tomorrow." "I am not tired." I hugged the blanket as if it were a shield. "I will not...
I matched with a hopeless teammate in a game. Two hours of insults later, we had each other's WeChat. Two hours after that, we were standing face to face outside a parking garage, and I realized the tall man who’d humiliatingly out-muscled me over a username was the same person who could ruin my life with a raised eyebrow. "You're—you're 'Invincible Explosive Dragon Warrior'?" I asked, pretending to be scary, though my whole body wanted to bolt. He looked down at me, a blade of a smile at...
I never expected to see them both at once. "I told you, don't be weird about it," Lucas said when I knocked on his door at two in the morning. "You were the one making noises," I hissed back, with less dignity than I intended. He opened the door wearing only a towel. Water beaded down his collarbone like tiny glass beads and my carefully rehearsed rebuke died on my lips. "Juliana?" he asked, eyes wide. "What are you doing here?" "I—" I couldn't finish. The sentence broke under...
"Hands off me." My knuckles slammed into a pair of rough palms, and a man's arms tightened around my waist like iron. "Ow—" I hissed, then froze. "Elizabeth?" A voice I had memorized in the marrow stopped me. My fingers slipped. I cupped his face with both hands. "Ely? Ely Finch—" He blinked as if woken from a bad sleep. "You called me a name I like." Tears slid out of me without permission. "You died. I died. I blew the car up and—" His thumb wiped my cheek, gentle as a...
“I’m done,” I said, and walked out. I left Braxton’s condo with my coat on the couch and his laugh still in my ears. I walked into a bar and drank until the world slurred. I meant to cry. I ended up clinging to a stranger. “He’s my cousin,” he said, when I asked him to come home with me. “I don’t care,” I said. “Do you want to come upstairs?” He had a neat jaw, the kind of calm face doctors wear. He smiled like a man who had practiced not feeling. “I’m Adrian Chavez.” “I know who...
I woke up with my neck killing me and my ribs like they'd been judged and found wanting. "Ow—who did this to me?" I hissed into the dimness. "Three! Where is she?" a distant voice shouted. I blinked and felt two strange, heavy lumps under my hands. My fingers froze. "What on earth—" "Stop staring and get up!" another voice barked. I pushed myself up despite the pain and saw motion: a masked figure in black fighting someone in yellow by a river, and a handsome man in moon-colored...
I never expected a hospital hallway to become a stage. "This is the men's clinic, the women's department is downstairs," the doctor said without looking up. "Come in, my husband, quick—" I called, fingers already on the door handle, watching the man's face shift the way a painting loses light. Pax Duffy glanced up. For one slow heartbeat I thought he recognized me. Then his eyes slid away like a curtain closing. "Everlee," I said, soft, the way you say someone's name when you try to...
I woke up on my knees to lantern light and the chant of servants. "Announce the gifts!" a man called from outside. "From the provincial governor: a pair of jade screens for the prince's birthday!" I pressed my palms to the floor and tried to remember which century I belonged to. The answer came slow and absurd: twenty-first, not this one. I swallowed and the lantern smoke made my eyes water. "Bring her forward," someone ordered. I looked up. Black silk, a row of men like sculptures...
"The rain hit my face like needles." I blink hard and taste iron. The world is a blur of gray trees and shouting voices. "Move! Get under the cave!" someone yells. I try to walk. My legs wobble. My small hand holds a green root so tight it hurts. "Gracelyn, come here," a voice orders. It sounds sharp. I think it's Danielle. I want to go, but I stand under the old willow instead. "What's wrong with that child?" someone in the cave says. "She always stands out," another voice...
"I can't keep giving him money," I said, the words small and flat in the kitchen where silence had grown heavy like dust. "He swore he'd stop," my father replied, looking at me as if speaking to a child who had broken a curious ornament. "He promised in front of everyone." "He promised he'd cut off his hand if he gambled again," I said. My voice trembled and the memory came back cold and sharp: Gavin Moller on his knees at my parents' house, a kitchen knife glinting. He pressed the...
I fell in love with a man who hated me. "I love you," I said once, in a life when I still thought love could save a thing. He laughed like ice breaking. "You make me tired," he said. "You make me remember things I do not want to remember." That was Isaiah Faure. He wore the black around him like breath. He was the one who came to take my life every time, and every time he looked at me, the look on his face was a blade. I remember being a pig first. "You're a pig again," someone...
