Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
"I can't help you spam people all night," Kadence told me through the phone, but I could hear her grin. "Please," I said, thumb hovering over the message. "Just one more push. For old times." "One more push," she agreed. "And one more guilt trip." I hit send. "You're ridiculous," I whispered to the quiet apartment. My sofa hugged my tired body. The TV light painted my face blue. My phone buzzed and my thumb found the screen like a habit. Kadence's message was bright and...
I open my eyes to the cold light of the bathroom and stare at my own face reflected back. I look like I got hit by a truck—hair tangled, eyes puffy, a bruise of shame still blooming under my skin. My head pounds in tempo with my heartbeat. "God, what did I do?" I whisper to my reflection. The shirt I'd pulled on isn't mine. It's a man's shirt—crisp, white, the smell faintly of tobacco and something expensive. I hold the sleeve up to my nose like an idiot. "This is not my life," I tell...
I have been a veterinarian for years, and I have seen dogs that won't stop eating, cats that won't stop singing—well, that's exaggeration—but I had never once been messaged by a snake. The phone buzzed in my palm. A message popped up with a short sentence and a location pin. "Help. I just bit someone. What do I do?" the text read. I blinked. Then I blinked again. "You're joking," I said out loud to no one. "This has to be a prank." The pin was real. I slid into my sneakers,...
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'll go," I said. "You're sure?" my mother mouthed, but she did not speak the words aloud. Her hands trembled on the hem of my sleeve. "I am sure," I said again. "He cannot have children. That is what she said." "That—" Auntie Lotus wiped her eyes and swallowed. "It's not simple, Gwen." "I know," I said, and the cover over my face felt heavier than any promise I had ever made. When they pulled the gauze away, I saw him. He was younger than anyone had warned, almost my age, pale...
I was supposed to be invisible that weekend. My mother had a long speech about family obligations, and I had my own plan: eat a free wedding meal and be home by two. I never thought "invisible" would lead me into a hallway of flying doors, inflatable hammers, and a man whose smile I would remember for weeks. "I told you not to go," my mom had said as she stuffed a folded cash note into my hand. "I'll be back before dessert," I promised. She shrugged and went back to her mahjong. "Don't...
I found a video once. A twenty-something woman dragged into a room, beaten, shocked, injected. The clip was cut and polished, only an hour left on the timeline. But she lasted six hours before she stopped breathing. "Her name was Gracie Bradshaw," I whispered, and the room tilted around me. It was July 14, 2018. My flight was delayed for weather and I landed at three in the morning. My phone lit up. Cohen Duncan called, voice sharp: "Come to Bayshore Hospital. Now." "What's wrong?"...
He said it like a verdict. "The Empress cannot be you." I spat a sunflower seed shell at him like a petty insult, watched it land beside his hair and felt my face turn into something I did not recognize. "Then she won't be the Empress either," I said, laughing too loud and too sharp. Matteo brushed the shell from his hair with the gentlest of gestures, as if he were petting a cat instead of touching the thing I had flicked at him. "You're too loud," he murmured. "Be quiet." I...
I rode a white mare into the capital like the wind, and I remember the way the city seemed to tilt a little to look at me. "It is not the right place for a show-off," someone had said that morning when I tightened my braid. I only laughed and drove my heel into the mare's flank. The streets were full of wheels and banners. Carriages parted. People recognized a band of escorts by the way they sat: tidy, disciplined, nothing wasted. When the big carriage did not slow, I did. "Hey!" the...
I signed a marriage certificate like signing away a key I never owned. "Can we divorce quickly after the registry?" I asked, voice small and sticky with cheap confessions. Elijah Barron stopped walking. He was taller than the doorway, an even taller shadow on the pavement, suit sharp, shoulders like maps anyone could get lost under. "You think that's easy?" he said, voice low and smooth. "You think I let go that fast?" I held the little red booklet up like proof and pretended I...
"I run when someone I love changes into someone I don't recognize." That thought is the first thing I repeat when Rowan Forsberg's face appears in the hallway of the private room, as if a bad scene slipped back into my life. My hands are folded over Sebastian Downs' arm—he's agreed to play boyfriend for tonight—and my smile is rented and fragile. "You look tense," Sebastian murmurs, his voice low enough that only I can hear. "Do you want more water?" "I'm fine," I say. "Just—music's...
I first noticed the basement the way you notice a bruise you can no longer ignore: small at first, then spreading until it colors everything. "Do not go down there," Stefan said the first time I asked. "Why?" I asked, smiling, holding a plate of his favorite roast while he stood in the doorway with his coat on. He always had his coat on like he was about to leave, even when he wasn't. "Because it's not for guests," he answered, gently, and kissed my cheek. "Trust me." "You're being...
I was ten years behind him and finally gave up in the tenth year. "You deleted me last night," I said to the empty room, fingers hovering over the phone like a child afraid to touch a hot stove. The rain was loud. The lightning felt personal. I typed and deleted the same desperate line until my thumbs were numb. "I’m scared. Please don't leave me," I wrote, and then I erased it. Again. At dawn, Christopher Compton accepted my friend request at eight on the dot — the exact time he...
I had never slept at Orlando Daley's apartment before that night. "I told you, take your coat," he said as I stood stiff in the doorway, rain thrumming the windows. "I can walk you out," I answered, and he smiled in a way he never did at work. "No need," he said, "stay. It's late." "Okay," I said, and the word felt small and safe. The lock clicked. The night settled like a soft blanket. Then the door banged open. "Stop!" someone cried. I felt Orlando's body go suddenly rigid...
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 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...
I wake up with the taste of ink and cold tea in my mouth and a pink canopy overhead that does not belong to any bedroom I have ever slept in. "Miss, miss, wake up," says Kimiko, my maid, tugging at the curtain. "Madam sent twice. Today Master is home. Hurry for the morning meal." "Who—" I press my palm to my forehead. My head is a drum. The canopy is girlishly pink. The voice inside my skull from last night—a mechanical bell—rings again and I remember a list of tasks and a number:...
I woke to cold wind and the smell of dust, and the sight of a city wall that belonged in a history drama. People in rough clothes moved like shadows. I pulled my thin jacket tighter and told myself one thing very calmly: I had crossed time. "Crossed?" I said, to nobody who could answer but to the small, familiar ping in my head. "Transit complete," said the small boy's voice. "Dempsey Karim reporting." I laughed. "You sound like you're five." "I am serviceable at five," Dempsey...
I told Jaina one autumn night, "I don't love you anymore." She looked at me like she had been waiting for that sentence for a long time. "Okay," she said simply. "I'll let you go." I thought that was the most generous thing I'd ever heard. I thought she would fight, cry, beg. I thought she would be loud and angry. Instead she was calm, like a person who had already lived through the moment a dozen times in her head. "Why are you so calm?" I asked, because I wanted to see fire, at least...
I never planned to be anyone's guardian, nurse, or bedtime storyteller. I certainly never planned to be the one who found out a man I once dated could play a part like a child and a liar at the same time. It was late when Juniper Kozlov came to my door, a hospital folder clutched like evidence. "You have to listen," she said as she pushed the paper into my hands. "I drove him here because he collapsed outside your building." "What? That's impossible." I stared at the line where the...
