Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 1964 short novels
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 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 never planned to be anyone’s wife, let alone an empress. I planned to sell out my father’s two hundred thousand silver, buy back every drop of stock, and leave the palace richer. That was my plan. "Three hundred thousand," I told my father that morning. "Two hundred at most," he answered. "Fine, deal." So I took two hundred thousand, piled my cart, and went to the capital. I learned fast how to be obvious without being obvious. I learned how to hide small mirrors and pots of rouge...
"I don't want you to say anything else. Sign here." I pushed the pen down and the paper slid under my fingers like a trapdoor. "Leanna," Vaughn said, very quietly, "I offered you houses, a downtown duplex, and ten million. Is there anything more you want?" "You offered me things," I said. "You offered me my life as a purchase order." He didn't look ashamed. He looked like a man reading a catalog. "You slept with him, didn't you?" Vaughn asked, then laughed the laugh people laugh...
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...
The door burst open. "Mother, the city has fallen—" a eunuch's thin voice cracked in the hall and then stopped, like someone had cut a chord. "Which prince?" Henley Huber stood up before she could think, mouth pinched by fear and duty. "Eleven, by imperial order." The eunuch's eyes slid past the consorts and landed on me. "Eleven Prince carried out the command." "Where is Prince Seven?" Loretta Simpson's hand closed on the eunuch's sleeve. "Answer me." The heavy doors swung all...
"I watched him kiss her in the middle of my birthday party." That sentence sits in my memory like a bruise. I was twenty then, wearing what I thought was a brave smile. The room was full of people I knew by name and some I did not, but Vaughn Black stood out the way a storm does. He had taken my teenage years — the years I trailed after him — and folded them into a neat, unremarkable paper plane. He launched that plane in front of everyone the night his latest conquest...
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...
1 "I drew a name," I said, holding the scrap of paper like it might bite. "Valentin Gonzalez?" "Valentin Gonzalez?" the senior at my side repeated, and his laughter was half a scoff. "You got Professor Gonzalez? That's everyone’s nightmare." "He's old," I said, and felt like I should know more than that. "They said he's... retired. Lives alone." "Exactly," Brecken Reynolds said. "He’s exactly the kind of old professor people avoid. Just go, get the signature, don’t ask questions." He...
"I won't marry you," I said, and the hall went silent. "Elisabetta—" Preston Renard's voice cracked like thin glass. He stood between tables of white roses and the crowd, his tux coat clean but his face raw. Brooke Wong's hand flew to her mouth. "You can't do this now." "I can," I said. "I will." I had not planned a speech. I had planned a quiet untying of myself from a life that belonged to some other version of me. But a video counts. A proof counts. And a crowd never leaves a wound...
I remember the rain first. It was the kind of rain that makes the air taste old, like the smell after books have been left closed too long. I remember crawling into the pigsty, the wood splintering under my hands, the pigs rustling, and the small unbearable thought that I might as well be one of them. "Don't move," someone had said when they found me. "Stay very still." "You can't keep me here," I wanted to say. "I'm a teacher." But the voice that said those words was not gentle....
I have a habit of sitting in the same seat at the same café. I like the way the light at five in the afternoon falls on the table like a thin promise. I like the way the chair remembers the curve of my back. I like the quiet that lets me hear my own thoughts before I send them out as headlines. That evening I told the waiter, "No tiramisu. Black Americano. Ice." He smiled like he already knew me. "Enjoy your writing, Tova." I set my phone face-down and got to work. I had to finish a...
"I found a man's tie on your bed." The words landed like a pebble into my pink duvet and rippled straight through the quiet living room. Kaylie Alvarado held up the grey tie between two fingers, squinting as if the fabric itself might confess a name. The tie looked almost obscene against the bubblegum sheets—too mature, too smooth, too deliberate. "It looks familiar," Valentina Booth said from the sofa, peeking over her phone. My phone started to buzz at the same second. I swallowed...
I am Emmaline Newton. I study art and I owe myself a lifetime of small, honest obsessions: painted pines, stubborn bamboos, and the smell of a bakery at noon. I tell this story because once, a girl in a yellow dress became dust, and I could not let her vanish like a forgotten brushstroke. "It's October," my friend Daria Reynolds said after class. "The whole city is doing autumn right." "High school feels like a race," I answered. "But some lines need time. They shouldn't be...
I found out about Erik's affair by accident. "I left a file here. Will you take it to the office?" I had asked that evening, carrying our twins and a sack of folded laundry. Erik had been at his desk, calm as ever. "Sure. Thanks," he said, and kissed the top of my head. He had left the file on his desk. When I stepped into his office to drop it off, I saw a milk‑carton style cup on his desk, the kind with a tiny round mouth you need a straw to drink from. "It's cute," I said aloud,...
I learned the names of light and sky from other people's mouths. I learned my own name from the lips of the man who bought me twice. "Helene Scholz," I say, and the name tastes like a stolen fruit. "My name is Helene," I tell the old woman who braids my hair in the back room. "What does the sun look like?" She kneels in the lamplight, brushes my hair, and answers without looking up. "Like warm hands on your face. Like gold that does not bite." "Will I ever see it?" I ask. "Not if...
I never meant to fall in love for real. I signed up to be a public girlfriend for two years because they said it would help him, and because I was a fan before I was anything else. I thought I could keep being the cheerful, unpaid assistant to his star. Then one night, the host asked about marriage on live television, and the moment the question hit me, something inside me cracked. "I'm done," I told myself. I typed the statement, closed my laptop, and left. Two days later, he was on my...
I never expected seven photos to turn my life upside down. "Did you see the confession wall?" Kiley asked when I walked into the dorm. She was fanning herself with a textbook, dramatic as always. "I saw," I said, trying to sound bored. "Someone keeps posting pictures of me." "Someone?" Mariah squealed from the bunk above. "Which someone? Show us." I pulled my phone out and scrolled. One, two, three—seven photos, each different, each of me with a lollipop in my mouth. "Why would...
I arrived at the study café with my bag half-open and my earbuds dangling like a promise. "Are you ready to fail spectacularly?" Katelyn winked when she saw me. "No," I said. "I'm ready to try a plan that actually works." Fox sat at the corner table already with his laptop open. He smiled once—rare, small, and decisive. "You brought the true papers?" he asked. "I brought the audio files, the script, and the notebook where I wrote every unknown word," I said. "Good," Fox said. "Then start...
I remember the second year of high school like a sunburn that never really faded. The classroom was hot; the fan above us whirred like an impatient insect. I sat at my desk with an English workbook open, mouthing words I knew by heart. "Why is she still studying during break?" someone behind me whispered with a laugh. "Look at her, playing the good girl again," another voice said, cruel and sharp. I kept my eyes lowered and continued. I had learned how to make silence my...
