Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 need to know—did she come?” I heard Knox Goto’s voice before I saw him. His assistant’s reply floated through the mirror in the dressing room as if from far away. “No,” Yale Davis said. “She’s not here.” Knox turned slowly, looking at himself. He was in a dark custom suit. He looked like the whole room belonged to him. “Are the invitations already out?” he asked. “Sent. Every single one,” Yale said. I tightened my fingers on the hem of my jacket. I could feel that same...
I woke to moonlight and the messy, dizzy ache of too much and too little sleep. The apartment smelled faintly of sandalwood and something metallic. My silk nightdress stuck to me like a second skin. Under the thin curtain of white fabric, shadows moved like vines. I blinked. A man rolled off the bed and laughed low. "Little princess, you can't burn bridges like that," he said, breathing in satisfaction. I turned my back on him and spat, "A toy. Just a toy. Keep it as trash if you...
I stepped out of the prison gate with the sun on my face and nothing in my hands but a paper bag and a borrowed dress. "Come on, Ava," Claudia Harper said, smiling too wide. "Let's fix you up. New hair, new life." "I can do this," I lied, my voice small. Jaelynn Everett laughed from the back seat. "Don't be so grim. Eat. Drink. Live for once." They took me to a hotel. They cut my hair and fed me very bland soup, and then Jaelynn pushed me toward the bar. "Find an older man," she...
I remember the night the bar closed because the summer tourists had thinned and the town finally let out a tired sigh. The bartender, Gunner Donovan, left a soft yellow lamp on the counter and creaked upstairs. I walked down slow steps and found him—Houston Huber—reclined in a lounge chair, a picture book on his chest, white collar open, long legs crossed, asleep like a man who carried the sea in his bones. "He looks like he could be a painting," I whispered to myself as I moved closer. I...
"I won't do it." I said it loud enough so the whole room could hear. Valentino Schwarz smiled like a man already in possession of a kingdom. "You will," he said. "You always do what you are told." I looked at him, at the elegant span of his shoulders, at the slow amusement in his eyes. The chandelier light sliced across his jaw, and for a moment I felt the old, nausea-making trick: he could make me see shadows and call them truth. "You think this is a performance," I said. "It was...
"I opened the wrong door." "Well, you did open it." Angelo grinned, leaning against a row of lockers like it was his throne. I wanted to crawl into the floor and disappear. Instead I froze and let my eyes do the impossible: count abs. "Hey," Mateo said, cheeks flushing, fingers on his shirt's hem like a nervous kid. "You okay?" "I'm—" I couldn't say "sorry" because it sounded like I'd asked for this, and I hadn't. So I said, "I forgot to lock the door." "And you walked into the...
"I can't believe I'm doing this." I press my palm to the cold brass of Wyatt's door knob and turn. My heart hammers like a trapped bird. "I told you not to be ridiculous," I whisper to myself, though I know I'm ridiculous. The hallway is a black tunnel. The bed is a dark shape. I tiptoe like I'm in a movie and stumble on the corner of the desk. Pain bites my shin and I hiss. "Are you okay?" a voice asks from the bed. I freeze mid-step, hand in the air, grin frozen on my face like...
I am Jensen Baldwin. I graduated with a master's degree. I had a boyfriend, Raphael Davenport, who was kind, steady, and from a family that owned a factory. I thought what we had was simple and honest. Then my aunt Susanne Cotton and her daughter Adelyn Moreau started a storm I never saw coming. "It'll be fine, Mom," I told my mother the night before we drove to Raphael's family's house for New Year. "We're just visiting." "Just visiting," my mother repeated, not sounding convinced. We...
"I can't believe you broke your leg," I said into the phone, palms sweating like I was about to faint. "You promised," Callum begged. "Please, Blythe. My spring semester starts late. It's only a little while. Just pretend to be me. No one will notice." "You want me to be your college twin?" I laughed, the sound too sharp. "Callum, I'm a girl. How do you expect me to live in a men's dorm?" "Please," he said again, voice small. "Dad will kill me if he knows I injured myself at a party....
"I want to sleep with you, Graham." He looked at me like I had said something impossible. "Lenore," he said softly, "you can want anything. But not because of someone else." I heard the words and they made a cold place open inside me. I had been married to Lincoln Lawson for two years. Our life together was a secret that lived in darkness—curtains closed, lights off, like people who were afraid of being seen. He loved someone else. Everyone knew, or almost everyone. They had gone 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...
I never planned to embarrass myself in front of four men I could not stop thinking about. I never planned to be the drunk sender of a group message that pulled in old lovers and a man I had secretly adored for years. "I like you, Finn," I typed with trembling thumbs. "I like you." "Who is this?" Heath wrote first. "..." Joel sent six dots; cold as glass. "Lmao, drunk?" Liam wrote. I stared at the avatars—those faces that had meant different things at different times—then the...
I never planned to become anyone's housekeeper. I never planned to fall in love either. But that week in the city, when summer felt too heavy and life felt too small, my whole world rearranged itself around one tall, quiet boy with stormy eyes and a very patient smile. "You still haven't made up with Jun—" my friend Laura started, and I shoved a milk tea straw into my mouth like it was a sword. "Don't say his name," I said. "I am not making up with anyone." "You and that 'not making...
"I pulled the hairpin free." "Stop her!" someone screamed. I had the whole hall in my hands for one instant — red silk, lantern light, whispers like knives. I pressed the cold metal to my palm and stepped forward until I was close enough to feel her breath. "You finally leave," I whispered. Kathryn Gonzalez laughed like a bell. "My dear, you are at your wedding. Calm down." "Not my wedding," I said. "Not my life." She gave me that mild look a woman gives a servant who...
I remember the alarm that morning like a shout in a quiet house. It rang, and I hit mute without thinking. I kept my eyes closed, listening to the thin quiet of the apartment while sunlight moved across the floor. “Gunnar, you awake?” my mother called from the kitchen. “Yep.” I pulled the blanket over my head for another minute. The city felt slow and soft at dawn. When I walked into class half-sleep and half-hungry, the first two periods were already over. The third period was Mr....
I am Juliana Buck, seventeen, in a dress that pinches my ribs and a temperament that will not be pinched down. Today my sister Megan Price is getting married. The house smells of jasmine and packet tea. The sunroom door—the big glass door with the brass handle—has been my fortress for an hour. "Give me nine-nine-nine-nine-nine," I say, and my voice is sharper than I meant. "Juliana," Dad—Bernabe Boyle—says from the other side of the glass. "Stop. It's your sister's wedding." "Then have...
I woke up in the dark and did not want anyone to know that my eyes saw again. "I can't see a thing," I told them for the hundredth time, and my voice was steady as a spoon. "You always say that," Forrest Tran, my little brother, laughed cruelly from across the table. "Maybe your eyes are lazy." "I am not lazy," I said. "I am unlucky." For years I lived on the edge of being noticed and then being pushed away. I was a low-born daughter in a house that had plans for other hands to line...
I still remember the first day I became a rumor. "Leticia, your name is everywhere," Gabrielle grabbed my phone and shoved it at me. "Why?" I asked, puzzled. "Look." She swiped. "Someone posted: 'Who is the girl Elton delivered tea to today?'" She laughed and kept showing me more screenshots. "I... that's me?" I said. "Of course it's you! The whole confession wall is spamming." Gabrielle's eyes were bright, her grin wide. "I didn't mean for any of this," I murmured. "I...
“Hands off my son!” I tore the cloth from my face and lunged forward. “Silence,” Grey Fournier said, his voice flat as a blade. “You are the one who caused all this. Stay where you belong.” They pushed past me like I was a piece of broken furniture. Daisy Muller laughed soft and false behind them. I felt the prayer beads of my old life slip through my fingers. I hit the ground. A woman I did not know grabbed my hair and dragged me out of the hall. I tasted blood. Outside the gate,...
