Short Books for Tired Readers

Short novels and novellas for tired readers with short attention spans 😩

Updated October 25, 2023
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The Penelopiad
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
Penelope's slyly brilliant side of the story, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale.
Giovanni's room
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
Take your understanding of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin to a whole new level, anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers.Shmoop's award-winning learning guides are now available on your favorite eBook reader. Shmoop...
Ragnarok : the end of the gods
Byatt, A. S.
Paper Book
Breakfast at Tiffany's and three stories
Capote, Truman
Paper Book
Immortalised by Audrey Hepburn's sparkling performance in the 1961 film of the same name, Breakfast at Tiffany's is Truman Capote's timeless portrait of tragicomic cultural icon Holly Golightly, published in Penguin Modern Classics. It's New York in the 1940s, where the...
A master of djinn
Clark, P. Dje?li?
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL 'Clever, wickedly fun . . . with an excellent balance of humour and heart. I loved it' S. A. Chakraborty, author of The City of Brass ...
Ring shout
Clark, P. Dj©·l©?
Audiobook
In America, demons wear white hoods. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation casts a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the...
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...
The ocean at the end of the lane
Gaiman, Neil
Paper Book
THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' AN ACCLAIMED WEST END THEATRE PRODUCTION ***** 'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a...
Chronicle of a death foretold : a novel
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Setting out to reconstruct a murder that took place 27 years earlier, this moving chronicle moves backwards and forwards in time, through the contradictions of memory and moments lost in the mists of time
Our souls at night
Haruf, Kent
Paper Book
'I loved Our Souls at Night' - David Nicholls, author of One Day. This is a love story. A story about growing old with grace. Addie Moore and Louis Waters have been neighbours for years. Now they both live alone, their houses empty of family,...
We have always lived in the castle
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
'Her greatest book ... at once whimsical and harrowing, a miniaturist's charmingly detailed fantasy sketched inside a mausoleum ... the deeper we sink, the deeper we want to go' Donna Tartt Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian...
The turn of the screw
James, Henry
Paper Book
The Turn of the Screw is an intense psychological tale of terror. It begins in an old house on Christmas Eve. It is the story of a Governess who comes to live with and take care of two young children. The Governess loves her new position in charge of the young children, however she is soon disturbed...
A house with good bones
Kingfisher, T.
Paper Book
A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family. 'Mother seems off.'
Thornhedge
Kingfisher, T.
Paper Book
From USA Today bestselling author, T. Kingfisher, comes an original, subversive fairytale about a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways. On the day of Toadling's birth, she was stolen...
What moves the dead
Kingfisher, T.
Paper Book
The Fall of the House of Usher meets Mexican Gothic in this new horror novella by awarding-winning author, T. Kingfisher. An instant USA Today & Indie bestseller From...
Every heart a doorway
McGuire, Seanan
Ebook
The strange library
Murakami, Haruki
Paper Book
Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this is a unique and wonderfully creepy tale that is sure to delight Murakami fans. 'All I did was go to the library to borrow some books'. On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library<...
Dept. of speculation
Offill, Jenny
Paper Book
Admired by critics, adored by readers, Dept. of Speculation is an annihilating, electrifying account of marriage and motherhood, love and madness.
Binti
Okorafor, Nnedi
Audiobook
The Yellow Wallpaper
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte
Ebook
Wide Sargasso Sea
Rhys, Jean
Paper Book
Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to...
The slow regard of silent things
Rothfuss, Patrick
Paper Book
The University, a renowned bastion of knowledge, attracts the brightest minds to unravel the mysteries of enlightened sciences like artificing and alchemy. Yet deep below its bustling halls lies a complex and cavernous maze of abandoned rooms and ancient passageways - and in the heart of it all...
The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other tales of terror
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paper Book
Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with 'damnable young man' Edward Hyde, the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer, and the final...
My name is Lucy Barton : a novel
Strout, Elizabeth.
Paper Book
A mother comes to visit her daughter in hospital after having not seen her in many years. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront her past, uncovering long-buried memories of a profoundly impoverished childhood; and her present, as the fa ade of her new life in New York begins to crumble,...
All Systems Red The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1
Wells, Martha.
Ebook
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...
Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Ethan works his unproductive farm, and struggles to maintain an existence with his suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
Another Brooklyn : a novel
Woodson, Jacqueline
Paper Book
Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything - until it wasn't. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighbourhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they...

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