Achieve Your Reading Goal - Great Reads Under 250 Pages

Whether it was your goal to read 5 or 50 books this year, find some quick reads on this list to get you across the finish line.

Updated November 8, 2023
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Red at the bone
Woodson, Jacqueline
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR "A spectacular novel that only this legend can pull off." -Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of  HOW TO BE AN...
The deep
Solomon, Rivers
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY LGBTQ SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY/HORROR AWARD The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society-and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly...
Chemistry : a novel
Wang, Weike
Paper Book
Named by The Washington Post as a Notable Work of Fiction in 2017 and by Entertainment Weekly as a Best Debut Novel of 2017 Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Ann Patchett on PBS NewsHour, Minnesota Public Radio, Maris Kreizman, and...
Piranesi
Clarke, Susanna
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2021 WINNER OF THE KITSCHIES' 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE THE TIMES,...
This is how you lose the time war
El-Mohtar, Amal
Paper Book
WINNER OF Hugo Award for Best Novella Nebula Award for Best Novella Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon...
Convenience store woman
Murata, Sayaka
Paper Book
The surprise smash hit - Japan's answer to Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.
The friend
Nunez, Sigrid
Paper Book
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the dog he has left behind. While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the...
All systems red
Wells, Martha
Paper Book
A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Winner: 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella Winner: 2018 Alex Award Winner: 2018 Locus Award One of the Verge's Best Books of 2017 A...
The incendiaries
Kwon, R. O.
Paper Book
I who have never known men
Harpman, Jacqueline
Paper Book
Discover the TikTok sensation from the publisher of The Handmaid's Tale. Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory...
A psalm for the wild-built
Chambers, Becky
Paper Book
Winner of the Hugo Award! In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools;...
In an absent dream
McGuire, Seanan
Paper Book
Winner: 2022 Hugo Award for Best Series A stand-alone fantasy tale from Seanan McGuire's Alex award-winning Wayward Children series, which began in the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Tiptree Honor List Every...
Infinite country
Engel, Patricia
Paper Book
"Remarkable...this is as much an all-American story as it is a global one." --Booklist (starred review) For readers of Valeria Luiselli and Edwidge Danticat, an urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation, offering an intimate...
A Christmas carol
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children. But at Christmas three ghosts come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and their family, that geniality brings its own reward. ...
The lathe of heaven : a novel
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paper Book
The Locus Award-winning science fiction novel by legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin, set in a world where one man's dreams rewrite the future. During a time racked by war and environmental catastrophe, George Orr discovers his dreams alter reality. George is compelled to receive...
The monster of Elendhaven
Giesbrecht, Jennifer
Paper Book
"A black tide of perversity, violence, and lush writing. I loved it." --Joe Hill "A tight, perfectly crafted story about retribution and what monsters deserve; stylish, quirky, and weirdly sexy? I'm into it." --R. F. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of...
Mouth to mouth
Wilson, Antoine
Paper Book
With the intellectual clarity of Don DeLillo and the dark compelling energy of The Girl on the Train, Mouth to Mouth is a brilliant literary thriller about the irresistibility of money and power, and how a beachside rescue can become life-long entrapment...
No one is talking about this
Lockwood, Patricia
Paper Book
'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale 'A masterpiece' Guardian 'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney 'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail 'I can't remember the...
The ocean at the end of the lane
Gaiman, Neil
Paper Book
A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys. This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival,...
Of love and other demons
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December...When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesizing a plague of rabies in their Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears...
Sula
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison's best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NAMWALI SERPELL, AUTHOR OF THE OLD DRIFT As young girls in a poor but close-knit...
The swimmers
Otsuka, Julie
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE WINNER * From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel that "starts as a catalogue of spoken and unspoken rules for swimmers at an aquatic center but unfolds into a powerful...
Tender Is The Flesh
Bazterrica, Agustina.
Paper Book
Everyone's eating human meat. Would you? A vivid, shocking dystopian novel from an Argentinian rising star.
To be taught, if fortunate
Chambers, Becky
Paper Book
National Bestseller! A Hugo and Locus Award Nominee! "Extraordinary . . . A future sci-fi masterwork in a new and welcome tradition." -- Joanne Harris, author if Chocolat A stand-alone science fiction novella from the award-winning, bestselling, critically-acclaimed author of...
Weather : a novel
Offill, Jenny
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER  From the beloved author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation--one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year--a "darkly funny and urgent" (NPR) tour de force...
Wide Sargasso sea
Rhys, Jean
Paper Book
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts Jean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of...
Every heart a doorway
McGuire, Seanan
Paper Book
Winner of the Hugo Award, Hugo Award for Best Series, Alex Award, Locus Award, and Nebula Award Nominated for the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, and Tiptree Honor List "A mini-masterpiece of portal fantasy -- a jewel of...

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