Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
I was a side concubine in the Crown Prince's house. My name is Amy Conrad, but everyone called me "Liangdi" in whispers that never fit my mouth. I had been here three years. For three years I lived between a laughing prince and a smiling princess, eating the scraps of their happiness like stale mooncakes. "They always sit together," I said once to Josefina Barker, my maid, when the prince and princess praised each other like a pair of matched lanterns. Josefina smiled, "They are made for...
I told myself Dali was about work. "I came to check a site," I said the first night, the words flat and sensible, like a marker line I could stand behind. Emanuel Blanchard looked at me for a long beat. "And the hot springs?" "Part of the research," I said. He smiled once—small, like the corner of a photograph curling—and I felt something loosen inside me. We reached the guesthouse after a long day on the road. The beds sighed when we collapsed into them. I closed my eyes,...
I remember the rain like a string of pearls across the city moat—the willow tips trembling and wet. The house at the end of the long red-lit street smelled of oil lamps and wet cloth and the particular nervous sweetness of a wedding night. I was carried through it all as if I were a rumor: hands at my elbows, rush of skirts, a drum of congratulations that I heard but did not understand. "Newlyweds to the bridal chamber!" someone called, and the room rose in one wave of noise that pressed me...
"I woke up and the first face I saw was Cillian's." "It can't be," I whispered. "You pinched me an hour ago." Cillian's voice was low, not unkind, but it made my skin crawl. "No—no way," I said, and my fingers scrapped my arm. "I was dreaming. It doesn't hurt, right? It was just a dream." "You pinched my arm," he repeated, and then he smiled a little—an odd, private smile that made me wish for cover. "I—" I clamped my mouth shut. "How did I even—" "Drink less next time," he...
I first knew Dalton Bullock as a shape in morning traffic, an efficient voice in meetings, and a face I could not stop writing small, private stories about in my head. "Do you remember which slide goes next?" Aldo asked me once in the conference room, and I looked up, blinking, because for a second all I could see was Dalton's profile at the head of the table, the way his jaw was always calm. "It's the financial one," I said, though my voice trembled a little. "Third slide." I hated that...
I remember the day he brought the child home as if the sun had gone rude and turned its face away. "Madam, please," the little girl begged on her knees, her hands pressed together like someone asking a temple for mercy. "Please let my mother come in. We will serve you. We will do anything." She was no more than five or six, a sharp little face like a seed, and her eyes—my God—those eyes were the same as Hayes's. They cut through me. Hayes Gustafsson carried the child, pressed her to...
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 got two envelopes on my twenty-fourth birthday. One had glittery paper and a neat embossed name. The other smelled of disinfectant when I opened it in the bathroom and found the two words that made everything tilt. "They sent me his wedding invitation," I told the sink like it could help, and then, softer, "and my diagnosis." "You're joking," the voice on the phone said. "It's not a joke," I said. "One says 'congratulations' for a life that's beginning. The other says 'we're sorry'...
"I can't breathe!" I tore my face out of cold water and gagged. Air hit my lungs like a knife. I gasped and clawed to shore. "Miss! Miss, are you alive?" A maid's voice was sharp and small. Someone wrapped a cloak around me. Hands were warm. I coughed until my head cleared. I sat up and looked around. Stone paths. A low pond. Wooden houses with tiled roofs. No cars. No neon. The world smelled of wood smoke and river mud. "Where am I?" I whispered, but the maid only cried. "Miss...
"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 never imagined the night would feel so thin—like a page barely holding its ink. When he said, "It's getting late. Let's sleep," the voice dragged me back from the edge of panic. "Sleep?" I whispered, fingers nervously twisting the hem of my wedding dress. My name is Ginevra Santiago. I was a substitute bride—traded like a piece in a ledger to secure money that could keep my mother alive. I had never been in a room like that before, never faced a man who looked like he had swallowed the...
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...
I moved into a new apartment full of cardboard and stubborn optimism, and then discovered, to my complete and undeniable horror, that my ex lived one flight below. "Do you have a cramp in your toe?" a low voice asked behind me as I fumbled with a box. I froze with my thumb held up like an idiot. "I—no. It's itchy. That's it." "Uh-huh," he said. "Uh-huh?" I should have walked away. I didn't. I told myself I wouldn't look. I did. He filled the hall like the kind of man who was...
"I’m pregnant with your husband’s child," the message read. "I told him he should leave you. He promised. Do you want to be fair? You’ve had five years and no baby. He wants a child. Let him have me." I stared at the unknown number. I put the phone down and blocked it without typing a reply. "This is the third time," I told myself out loud. "Third time in three months." "Gavin," I asked him directly that night. "Are you having a baby with someone else?" He smiled like he had done...
"I will not stand for this," I said, and the cup hit the floor. They all froze. The silk curtains barely moved. Greyson Porter looked at the shards like they were proof of my crime and not his. "Emerald." He smiled the way a man smiles when he thinks he has already won. "Sit. Drink your tea." I did not sit. I bent and picked up the broken cup. "This cup remembers how you used it," I said. "It remembers the last thing I tasted, the last breath I never got." "Stop." He leaned forward...
"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 am Jadyn Bates. The night Colin Ibrahim asked for a divorce was a bright, cruel afternoon. He sat on our balcony swing, the little string lights still twinkling even in daylight, and he said three words that made my heart stop. "We should divorce." I almost dropped my phone. I asked, "Why?" "He came back." Colin said it like a fact. He put his cigarette out in the ashtray and did not look at me. His right hand trembled. He had always been good at making final words sound...
The pomegranate tree in our courtyard was thick with blossoms, clusters so bright they seemed to argue with the sky. "Ingrid, look how they bloom this year," I said, running one hand along the rough bark. "They'll fruit before autumn," Ingrid Larson replied. "Miss Journi, they say pomegranate means many sons and daughters." I smiled but kept my hands folded in my lap. "Then they will be busy trees." Joyce Kraemer arrived that morning, not with a greeting, but with a slow,...
I lay on the operating table and watched his face above me through the surgical lights. Foster Watson leaned in, the blue around his eyes darker than I remembered, and said with a half-smile, "What did you get tattooed there?" "My portrait," I said, teeth clenched against the pain, trying to push a grin through. "Nice, right?" The anesthesiologist snorted into silence, then let out a laugh. Foster's long brows knit together, and his gloved finger traced the edge of my lower belly. "On...
