short fiction books under 100 pages

20 Best Short Books Under 100 Pages

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Short books have become increasingly popular in recent years as our busy lives make it difficult to find the time for lengthy reads. But just because a book is short doesn’t mean it lacks substance. In fact, some of the most impactful works of literature are under 100 pages, offering quick and insightful readings that can make a lasting impression.

Whether you’re looking for a quick escape or some thought-provoking material, here are some of the best short books under 100 pages that you should add to your reading list. The following list is an unordered list of best books under 100 pages. Let’s start:

Table of Contents

Best Short Books Under 100 Pages

1. as a man thinketh by james allen.

“As a Man Thinketh” is a self-help book written by James Allen and first published in 1902. The book is a philosophical treatise on the power of thought and its impact on a person’s life.

Allen argues that our thoughts shape our reality and determine the quality of our lives. He writes that the things we think about, both positive and negative, have a direct impact on our emotions, actions, and, ultimately, our success in life. He goes on to say that the key to changing our lives and achieving success is to cultivate positive thoughts and beliefs and to eliminate negative and limiting ones.

This short book explores the idea of personal responsibility and the importance of taking control of one’s thoughts and beliefs. Allen argues that individuals can create their own reality through the choices they make and the thoughts they focus on. He writes that by focusing on positive and constructive thoughts, a person can overcome adversity and achieve success, while negative and limiting thoughts will only lead to disappointment and failure.

In conclusion, “As a Man Thinketh” is a powerful and inspiring self-help book that continues to be widely read and revered more than a century after its publication. Its message of personal responsibility and the transformative power of thought has been a source of inspiration for millions of people around the world, and its simple and straightforward writing style makes it accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. Whether you are looking to improve your life, cultivate positive thoughts, or simply find inspiration and motivation, “As a Man Thinketh” is a timeless classic that is sure to captivate and inspire.

2. The Art Of War by Sun Tzu

“The Art of War” is a treatise on military strategy written by the ancient Chinese military general and strategist Sun Tzu. The book was written more than 2,000 years ago and is widely considered to be one of the most influential works on military strategy in the world.

The book is comprised of 13 chapters, each of which covers a different aspect of warfare, including strategy, tactics, and leadership. Sun Tzu emphasizes the importance of understanding the enemy and using knowledge of the terrain to gain a strategic advantage. He also writes about the importance of deception and the use of spies, and the need to maintain control of one’s own forces while disrupting the enemy’s.

Sun Tzu’s ideas are based on the principle that victory can be achieved with minimal conflict and loss of life, and he stresses the importance of thinking ahead and planning for all possible scenarios in a military campaign. He also highlights the need for effective communication, unity, and discipline among the troops and the importance of adaptability and the ability to change tactics when the situation demands it.

In conclusion, “The Art of War” is a classic work on military strategy that continues to be widely read and studied more than 2,000 years after its publication. Its ideas and principles have been applied in numerous fields, including business, sports, and politics, and its insights into the nature of conflict and the importance of strategy and planning are as relevant today as they were in ancient China. Whether you are interested in military history or strategy or simply looking for a timeless classic that can help you think more critically and strategically, “The Art of War” is a must-read that is sure to captivate and inspire.

3. Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson M.D.

This one is my personal favorite book, and I hope it will be yours, too, after you finish reading it. “Who Moved My Cheese?” was written by Spencer Johnson and first published in 1998. The book uses a simple parable to explore the topic of change and how individuals can handle change in their lives.

Here are the key points of the book:

• The book uses the allegory of four characters (two mice and two “littlepeople”) searching for cheese in a maze.
• The cheese represents what people want in life, whether it’s a job, a relationship, or a personal goal.
• The maze represents the complex and constantly changing environment in which individuals find themselves.
• The four characters react differently to the changes that occur when the cheese runs out.
• The two mice quickly adapt to the change and find new cheese, while the two “littlepeople” resist change and struggle to find new cheese.
• The book explores the idea that change is a constant in life , and that individuals must be prepared to adapt and change in order to achieve success and happiness.
• The book emphasizes the importance of embracing change, being flexible, and having a positive attitude.
• The book also highlights the dangers of clinging to the past and being resistant to change, as this can lead to disappointment and frustration.
• The book has become a classic in the self-help genre and has inspired numerous adaptations and spin-off products, including a video, a workbook, and a board game.

In conclusion, “Who Moved My Cheese?” is a simple yet powerful book that provides a valuable lesson about the importance of adapting to change. Through its allegory of four characters searching for cheese in a maze, the book offers a compelling reminder that change is a constant in life, and that individuals must be prepared to embrace change and adapt to new circumstances in order to achieve success and happiness.

4. Tao te Ching by Laozi

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese text traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, although the exact authorship of the text is unknown. The text, written in verse, is a work of philosophy and spirituality that explores the Tao, or the Way, and offers guidance for living a virtuous and harmonious life.

• The Tao Te Ching is a collection of 81 short verses that explore the concept of the Tao and offer guidance for living a virtuous and harmonious life.
• The Tao is described as the ultimate reality, the source of all things, and the path of nature.
• The text emphasizes the importance of simplicity, humility, and non-action and suggests that the most effective way to achieve one’s goals is to align oneself with the Tao.
• The Tao Te Ching teaches that the pursuit of power and wealth leads to conflict and suffering and that true happiness and fulfillment can only be achieved by embracing the Tao and living in harmony with nature and with others.
• The text also explores themes of morality, wisdom, and the nature of existence and offers advice on how to live a virtuous and fulfilling life.
• The Tao Te Ching has had a profound influence on Chinese philosophy and spirituality, and has been interpreted in many different ways, including as a Taoist text, a Confucian text, and a Buddhist text.
• The text is widely regarded as one of the great works of Chinese literature and philosophy, and has been translated into numerous languages and read by millions of people around the world.

In conclusion, the Tao Te Ching is a rich and thought-provoking text that explores the concept of the Tao and offers guidance for living a virtuous and harmonious life. Through its verses, the text provides a powerful message about the importance of simplicity, humility, and non-action, and offers a timeless and profound insight into the nature of existence and the human condition.

5. Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss, and Surviving the Titanic by Elizabeth Kaye

“Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss, and Surviving the Titanic” is a book by Elizabeth Kaye that tells the story of the passengers and crew who were rescued by Lifeboat No. 8 during the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

The book provides a unique perspective on the disaster, using primary sources such as letters, diaries, and eyewitness accounts to paint a vivid picture of the events that took place. The author explores the themes of love, loss, and survival and how these emotions affected the passengers and crew of Lifeboat No. 8 in the aftermath of the tragedy.

The book also highlights the story of the Countess of Rothes, who took charge of the tiller of Lifeboat No. 8 and helped steer it through the dark, icy waters, as well as the budding romance between Roberta Maioni, the Countess’s ladies maid, and Jack Phillips, the Titanic’s wireless operator. “Lifeboat No. 8” provides a fresh and thought-provoking account of one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century and is sure to captivate and inspire.

6. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and was first published in 1892. The story is a fictionalized account of Gilman’s own struggles with postpartum depression and the treatment she received from her physician, who prescribed rest and inactivity. The main character in the story is a woman who is suffering from depression and is being treated by her husband, a physician, who believes in the rest cure. The woman is confined to a small room with yellow wallpaper, which becomes a source of obsession and terror for her.

The story is written as a series of journal entries made by the woman, and as she becomes more and more obsessed with the yellow wallpaper, she begins to see patterns and shapes in the design that she interprets as figures moving behind the paper. The woman’s descent into madness is paralleled by her growing defiance against the restrictions imposed on her by her husband and physician. She becomes more and more isolated and is eventually driven to complete madness by the yellow wallpaper and the limitations imposed on her.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered a classic of feminist literature and is often read as a critique of the treatment of women by the medical profession in the 19th century. Gilman’s story is a powerful commentary on the ways in which women’s voices and experiences were ignored and marginalized in a society dominated by men. The story also speaks to the themes of oppression and the effects of confinement and isolation on the human psyche.

Overall, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a haunting and powerful story that continues to captivate readers more than a century after it was first published. Its themes of oppression, isolation, and madness remain relevant and have made it a staple of literature and feminist studies. The story’s vivid descriptions and gripping narrative make it a must-read for anyone interested in literature, feminist studies, or the history of mental health.

7. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

“Of Mice and Men” is a powerful short novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1937. The book is just a little over 100 pages. The book has around 107 pages.

Coming to the story which takes place during the Great Depression and follows the lives of two migrant workers, George Milton, and Lennie Small, as they travel from job to job in search of work. George is a small, wiry man with quick wits, while Lennie is a large, mentally disabled man with a love for petting soft things. The two men have a close friendship, and George serves as a caretaker for Lennie, who is unable to care for himself.

The story begins as George and Lennie arrive at a new job on a ranch in California. They meet a group of other workers who are all looking for a way to escape their hard lives and find some sense of purpose. Despite their differences, the men form a community and help each other through tough times. However, their plans for the future are disrupted when Lennie accidentally kills the wife of one of their coworkers, Curley. Fearing for their safety, George decides that the only way to protect Lennie is to kill him before the authorities can get to him.

“Of Mice and Men” is a powerful, timeless story that explores the themes of friendship, loneliness, and the American Dream. Steinbeck’s characters are complex and nuanced, and the novel is filled with vivid descriptions of the landscape and the people who inhabit it. The story is both a commentary on the harsh realities of life during the Great Depression and a timeless tale of the bonds of friendship and the power of the human spirit.

One of the key themes in the novel is loneliness. The characters in “Of Mice and Men” are all searching for connection and a sense of belonging, and they find comfort in each other’s company. However, the harsh realities of their lives mean that they are constantly on the move and unable to form lasting relationships. This sense of loneliness and isolation is heightened by the backdrop of the Great Depression, which left many people feeling adrift and without purpose.

Lastly, it is a heartbreaking story that continues to be widely read and studied. Its powerful themes and memorable characters have made it a timeless work of literature that speaks to the human condition and the struggle for meaning in a difficult world. Steinbeck’s writing is both beautiful and brutal, and the novel is a testament to his ability to create vivid and memorable stories that have stood the test of time. If you are a fan of short novels, then this is the book for you.

8. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“We Should All Be Feminists” is a book-length essay by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, first published in 2014. The essay is based on a TEDx talk that Adichie gave in 2012 and draws on her own experiences growing up in Nigeria and her observations about the intersection of gender and race.

• The essay argues that we need a new definition of feminism, one that includes men and women of all races and classes and that addresses the ways in which gender intersects with other forms of oppression.
• Adichie describes her own experiences growing up in Nigeria, including her realization at a young age that she was considered inferior because she was female.
• She argues that the notion of a single, universal definition of femininity is limiting and reinforces patriarchal values and that a more inclusive definition of femininity would benefit both women and men.
• Adichie argues that society’s expectations of women, such as the expectation that women be nurturing and caring, serve to limit women’s opportunities and reinforce patriarchal values.
• The essay argues that the concept of “feminism” has been misunderstood and that the true goal of feminism is to create a world in which men and women are treated equally and have equal opportunities.
• Adichie argues that this goal is not just about women’s rights but about creating a more just and equal society for all people.
• The essay is written in a clear and accessible style, making it accessible to a wide range of readers.
• The book has become a classic of feminist literature and has been widely read and discussed, inspiring a new generation of feminists and sparking important conversations about gender, race, and equality.

In conclusion, “We Should All Be Feminists” is a powerful short essay that challenges readers to rethink their understanding of feminism and to work towards creating a world in which men and women are treated equally. Through her own experiences and observations, Adichie provides a compelling argument for why we should all be feminists and why this is a goal that is not just about women’s rights but about creating a more just and equal society for all people.

9. Very Good Lives by J. K. Rowling

“Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination” is a book by J.K. Rowling, published in 2015. The book is based on a commencement speech that Rowling gave at Harvard University in 2008 and reflects on her own experiences of failure and success and the importance of imagination.

Here are some interesting things about the book:

• The book reflects on Rowling’s own experiences of failure and success, including her struggles as a single mother and her eventual success as the author of the Harry Potter series .
• Rowling argues that failure is a necessary part of the path to success and that we should embrace our failures and use them as opportunities to learn and grow.
• The book emphasizes the importance of imagination and creativity in our lives and argues that these qualities are often undervalued in our society.
• Rowling shares her own experiences with imagination and creativity and argues that these qualities have been essential to her own success and happiness.
• The book offers advice on how to cultivate imagination and creativity in our own lives and how to pursue our passions and dreams despite setbacks and failures.
• The book is written in a clear and accessible style, making it accessible to a wide range of readers.
• The book has been widely read and celebrated for its inspiring message about the power of imagination, creativity, and resilience in the face of adversity.

In conclusion, “Very Good Lives” is a powerful and inspiring book that encourages readers to embrace their failures and use them as opportunities to learn and grow. Through her own experiences and reflections, Rowling provides a compelling argument for the importance of imagination and creativity in our lives and offers practical advice on how to pursue our passions and dreams. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration and guidance on how to lead a rich and fulfilling life.

10. Antigone by Sophocles

“Antigone” is a play written by Sophocles, one of the three great ancient Greek playwrights, and was first performed in 441 BC. The play is one of the three Theban plays and is considered one of the greatest works of ancient Greek tragedy.

Here are the key points of the play:

• The play is set in Thebes and tells the story of Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, who defies the edict of the ruler, Creon, by burying her brother Polynices, who died in a battle against Thebes.
• Antigone’s actions are seen as a challenge to the authority of Creon, who declares that Polynices should be left unburied as a punishment for his rebellion against Thebes.
• The play explores themes of loyalty, obedience, and the conflict between individual conscience and the rule of law.
• Antigone is depicted as a determined and heroic figure who is willing to risk her own life to fulfill her duty to her brother and the gods.
• The play also explores the consequences of the choices made by Antigone and Creon and the impact of those choices on their families and the city of Thebes.
• Antigone is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of ancient Greek tragedy and has been performed and adapted for various audiences for over 2,000 years.
• The play’s themes of civil disobedience, the power of the individual conscience, and the conflict between individual rights and the rule of law continue to be relevant and have inspired countless works of literature, art, and popular culture.

In conclusion, “Antigone” is a timeless masterpiece of ancient Greek tragedy that explores universal themes of loyalty, obedience, and the conflict between individual conscience and the rule of law. Through its powerful characters and memorable dialogue, the play continues to captivate audiences and inspire new interpretations and adaptations. This play is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Western literature or the enduring power of drama.

11. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“The Little Prince” is a timeless and classic tale written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that has captured the hearts and imaginations of people of all ages since its publication in 1943. The book is a philosophical and imaginative journey that explores the themes of love, friendship, and the meaning of life.

• The Little Prince is a timeless story about a young prince who travels from planet to planet, meeting different characters and learning important life lessons.
• The Little Prince is depicted as a curious and innocent child who is searching for the meaning of life and the essence of what it means to be human.
• Throughout his journey, the Little Prince meets various characters, including a king, a conceited man, a tippler, a businessman, and a lamplighter, who all teach him valuable lessons about the complexities of human nature and relationships.
• One of the central themes of the book is the importance of love and friendship. The Little Prince’s relationship with the narrator, a pilot, is a poignant example of the power of genuine friendship and human connection.
• The Little Prince’s encounters with the various characters highlight the negative consequences of greed, vanity, and the obsession with material things. The book encourages readers to reflect on their own priorities and to appreciate the simple things in life.
• The Little Prince is a lyrical and imaginative story that transcends time and language, and continues to resonate with readers of all ages. The book’s beautiful illustrations, combined with its philosophical musings, make it a truly unique and enchanting read.
• The Little Prince is a book that has the power to touch the hearts and minds of readers, and to inspire them to think deeply about the meaning of life and the importance of love, friendship, and the simple things in life.

12. Larger than Life by Jodi Picoult

“Larger than Life” is a novel written by bestselling author Jodi Picoult. The novel is a family drama that explores the relationship between a father and his daughter, and the impact of a rare genetic condition on their lives.

• The novel is set in New Hampshire and focuses on the relationship between Holly, a young girl who has a rare genetic condition called Proteus syndrome, and her father, Luke.
• Holly’s condition causes her to grow at an accelerated rate and has a profound impact on her physical and emotional well-being.
• Luke is a single father who is struggling to raise Holly and is faced with the challenges of balancing his work, his relationship with his daughter, and his own emotional needs.
• The novel explores themes of family, love, and sacrifice, and the impact of a rare genetic condition on a family.
• Through her character, Holly, Picoult sheds light on the challenges faced by children with rare genetic conditions and their families.
• The novel also explores the role of medicine in our lives and the ethical implications of modern medical advances.
• “Larger than Life” is a heart-warming and emotionally charged novel that is both touching and thought-provoking.
• Picoult is known for her insightful and compassionate approach to complex and controversial issues, and “Larger than Life” is no exception.

In conclusion, “Larger than Life” is a powerful and poignant novel that explores the relationship between a father and his daughter, and the impact of a rare genetic condition on their lives. Through its insightful and compassionate approach, the novel sheds light on the challenges faced by children with rare genetic conditions and their families and offers a message about the importance of family, love, and sacrifice. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in family drama, medical ethics, or the impact of genetic conditions on individuals and families.

13. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, one of the master storytellers of the horror and mystery genre. Published in 1843, it remains a classic of the horror genre and is considered one of Poe’s most famous works.

Here are the key points of the story:

• The story is narrated by an unnamed narrator who claims to be sane but is struggling with the guilt of having murdered an old man with a “vulture eye.”
• The narrator describes in vivid detail the planning and execution of the murder and the elaborate steps he took to conceal the evidence of the crime.
• The narrator’s guilt begins to haunt him as he hears a persistent, pounding heartbeat that he believes to be the old man’s ghost seeking revenge.
• The narrator’s attempts to convince the police officers of his sanity ultimately lead to his downfall, as he confesses to the crime and reveals the hiding place of the old man’s body.
• The story is told in a vivid, intense, and almost manic style that builds tension and suspense to a climactic finale.
• The story explores themes of guilt, madness, and the power of the human imagination and is a perfect example of Poe’s ability to create suspense and fear through his use of language.
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” is considered one of Poe’s most famous works and continues to be widely read and studied as a masterpiece of the horror genre.
• The story’s enduring popularity is a testament to Poe’s skill as a storyteller and his ability to evoke fear and suspense through his writing. Themes of guilt, madness, and the power of the human imagination are timeless and continue to resonate with readers to this day.

14. The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli

“The Prince” is a political treatise written by Nicolo Machiavelli in the early 16th century. It is considered one of the earliest works of modern political philosophy and remains one of the most influential books on political thought.

• The Prince is a guide for ruling and maintaining power, written for the ruling class of Italy.
• Machiavelli asserts that the primary goal of a ruler should be to maintain power and that all actions should be taken with this goal in mind.
• The Prince argues that the ends justify the means and that rulers should not be bound by traditional moral codes but should instead act in the best interest of their state and their own power.
• Machiavelli argues that it is often necessary for rulers to act harshly and use fear to maintain power and that it is better to be feared than loved.
• The Prince also includes advice on the use of military power, the creation of alliances, and the importance of diplomacy.
• Machiavelli argues that a ruler should be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances and should be flexible in their approach to ruling.
• The Prince remains one of the most influential books on political thought, and its ideas have been studied and debated for centuries.
• Machiavelli’s ideas are considered controversial, and the book has been both praised and criticized for its frank and pragmatic approach to politics.
• Despite its controversial nature, The Prince remains an important work in the history of political thought and continues to be widely read and studied. It remains a seminal work on the topic of power and politics and is considered a classic of Western literature.

15. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a classic novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. It is a tale of mystery and horror that explores the duality of human nature.

• The story follows the lawyer, Mr. Utterson, as he investigates the strange case of his friend, Dr. Jekyll, and the evil Mr. Hyde.
• Dr. Jekyll is a respected physician and scientist who has developed a potion that separates the good and evil aspects of his personality.
• The evil Mr. Hyde is the result of this separation, and he is violent, cruel, and completely lacking in moral compass.
• As the story progresses, Mr. Hyde begins to take over Dr. Jekyll’s life, and the good doctor is powerless to stop him.
• The tale ends with the tragic revelation that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person, and that the potion has permanently transformed him into the evil Mr. Hyde.
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is considered one of the best examples of the Gothic horror genre, and it has been widely adapted into film, television, and stage productions.
• The novella is also considered an important work of Victorian literature, and it reflects the anxieties and fears of the era.
• The duality of human nature is a central theme of the book, and the story explores the idea that every person has both good and evil within them.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains a popular and enduring work of fiction, and it continues to be widely read and studied. It is considered a classic of English literature and a seminal work in the horror genre.

16. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig

“Chess Story,” also known as “The Royal Game,” is a novella by the Austrian author Stefan Zweig. First published in 1942, it is a story about the power of chess and its impact on the human spirit.

• The story takes place on board an ocean liner, where two chess players, Mirko Czentovic and Dr. B, engage in a series of chess games.
• Mirko Czentovic is a chess prodigy and world champion, while Dr. B is an amateur player who has been practicing chess as a form of escape.
• The two players engage in a series of games that become increasingly intense as Dr. B discovers that Mirko is not just a chess master but a man who has been conditioned to play chess as a way of life.
• The chess games become a metaphor for the larger struggles in life as the two players engage in a battle for dominance and control.
• Through the chess games, Dr. B learns the power of strategy and the importance of using his own mind and creativity to overcome obstacles.

The novella explores themes of individuality, freedom, and the power of the mind, and it highlights the importance of using our own skills and abilities to overcome adversity. Chess Story is considered one of Stefan Zweig’s best works, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of literature. The novella is also a commentary on the political and social events of the time, and it reflects the anxieties and fears of the world in the mid-20th century.

Despite its focus on the game of chess, Chess Story is not just a story about the game, but a story about the human spirit and the power of the mind. It is a timeless work that continues to be widely read and appreciated. So, if you’re one of the book lovers of short stories than definitely give this book a try.

17. Daisy Miller: A Study by Henry James

“Daisy Miller: A Study” is a novella written by Henry James and first published in 1878. The story is set in Europe and revolves around the character of Daisy Miller, a young American woman traveling abroad with her family. The protagonist, Winterbourne, is a wealthy American who is captivated by Daisy’s charm and beauty but also puzzled by her behavior and the scandal that seems to follow her wherever she goes.

The main theme of the story is the conflict between European and American cultures, as Daisy’s freedom and independence clash with the social norms and expectations of European society. Through her character, James explores the societal and cultural differences between the Old World and the New World, as well as the attitudes towards women and their roles in society.

Throughout the story, Daisy’s actions and behavior cause controversy and scandal in European society, leading to her being shunned by many of her acquaintances. Despite this, she remains undeterred and continues to act as she pleases, much to her confusion and frustration with Winterbourne.

In the end, Daisy’s defiance and lack of concern for the opinions of others lead to her untimely death, which serves as a warning to the reader about the dangers of disregarding societal norms. The novella ends with Winterbourne realizing that he was mistaken in his judgment of Daisy and that she was in fact, a “very pretty, innocent, lively young girl.”

“Daisy Miller: A Study” is considered a masterpiece of American literature and is widely regarded as one of James’s greatest works. It remains a popular and relevant story today, as its themes of cultural differences and the struggle for independence continue to resonate with readers.

18. The Alienist by Machado De Assis

“The Alienist” is a novel written by the Brazilian author Machado de Assis and was first published in 1882. The story is set in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro. It follows the experiences of Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a successful and respected psychiatrist who decides to study the human mind and behavior in order to understand the causes of madness.

Bacamarte returns to his hometown and uses the townspeople as subjects for his research, hoping to determine the root cause of their mental illnesses. As he continues his experiments, the townspeople begin to fear him and his work, and rumors of his madness spread. The townspeople’s reactions to Bacamarte’s work become a central theme of the story, as he faces opposition from those who do not understand or agree with his methods.

The novel is known for its wit, irony, and humor, as well as its commentary on the themes of power, knowledge, and the pursuit of truth. Through Bacamarte’s character, Machado de Assis questions the idea of science as a tool for progress and the use of power in the pursuit of knowledge. The novel also explores the relationship between the individual and society, as Bacamarte’s pursuit of knowledge causes him to be isolated and rejected by the community.

In addition to its themes, “The Alienist” is also notable for its unique narrative structure, as the story is told through a series of letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. This narrative style provides a rich and diverse perspective on the events of the story, giving the reader a unique glimpse into the minds of the characters and their motivations.

“The Alienist” is considered a classic of Brazilian literature and is widely regarded as one of Machado de Assis’s most important works. Its themes of power, knowledge, and the pursuit of truth continue to resonate with readers and make it a relevant novel even today.

19. Larger Than Life by Jodi Picoult

“Larger Than Life” is a novel written by bestselling author Jodi Picoult. The story is centered around a family who, after the death of their father, are left with an elephant named Ellie as the only remaining part of his legacy. Ellie is a magnificent and beloved creature, but she is also an enormous responsibility and a reminder of the father who is no longer there.

As the family tries to navigate their loss and the challenges of caring for Ellie, they begin to learn important lessons about themselves and each other. The main character, who is the mother of the family, must come to terms with her own grief and the changes that have taken place in her life. She finds comfort in her relationship with Ellie and begins to see the world in a different way, learning to appreciate the beauty and majesty of the elephant and the lessons she can teach.

The novel explores themes of grief, loss, and the power of love and family. Picoult writes about the complex relationships that exist within a family and the challenges that can arise when a family member is lost. Through the character of Ellie, the story also highlights the importance of taking care of animals and the responsibility we have to protect them.

“Larger Than Life” is a beautifully written novel that is both touching and captivating. Picoult’s ability to create characters that are both real and relatable, combined with her insights into the human condition, make this book a must-read for fans of contemporary literature. The story is a testament to the power of love, family, and the relationships we build with each other and the animals around us.

20. The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin

“The Birds’ Christmas Carol” is a children’s novel written by Kate Douglas Wiggin, originally published in 1887. The book tells the story of Carol Bird, a young girl who is very sick and must stay in bed during the Christmas holiday. Her siblings and friends rally around her, trying to make the holiday special, and in turn, they learn the true meaning of Christmas. The story takes place in a small New England town and focuses on the experiences of Carol and her family, as well as the town’s poor, who are helped by the generosity of the town’s wealthier residents.

Throughout the book, Carol’s health improves, and she learns to appreciate the simple things in life, such as the love and kindness of her family and friends. The story highlights the importance of giving and helping others, as well as the joy that can be found in even the most difficult circumstances. The book also explores themes of family, community, and the true meaning of Christmas.

Lastly, “The Birds’ Christmas Carol” is a heart touching tale that teaches the importance of love, generosity, and selflessness. It is a timeless classic that is sure to warm the hearts of readers of all ages. The book’s enduring popularity is a testament to the power of its message and the enduring appeal of its characters.

In conclusion, short books can offer a wealth of experiences, insights, and entertainment, despite their brevity. Whether you’re looking for a quick escape, a thought-provoking read, or just a fun, lighthearted book to pass the time, there’s something for everyone in the Best Short Books Under 100 Pages list.

From the timeless classic “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London, to the timeless wisdom in “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen, and the timeless strategy in “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, these books are sure to leave a lasting impact on your life.

For those looking for a lighthearted and entertaining read, “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson M.D. and “Very Good Lives” by J.K. Rowling offer a perfect perspective. “Tao te Ching” by Laozi and “We Should All Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offer thought-provoking insights into the complexities of life and human nature.

Short books like “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, and “Antigone” by Sophocles, provide powerful portrayals of human experience and the enduring impact of our choices. And “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and “The Prince” by Nicolo Machiavelli offer timeless lessons on the nature of leadership and power.

In short, the Best Short Books Under 100 Pages list is a diverse collection of books that offer a wide range of experiences and insights, and are sure to leave a lasting impact on your life. So, what are you waiting for? Grab one of these books today mentioned above and see for yourself!

Keywords: james allen genre, hans christian andersen genre, sarah stewart genre, shirley jackson genre, spencer johnson genre, alice hemming genre, taylor jenkins reid genre, munro leaf genre, robert mccloskey genre, jamaica kincaid genre, laura barnard genre, kate douglas wiggin genre, burgess genre, khaled hosseini genre, nellie bly genre, chimamanda ngozi adichie genre, nikolai gogol genre, fredrik backman genre

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The best short books under 100 pages and quick to read

Fantastic books that don't outstay their welcome...

We all want to be able to read more books and smash through our mounting to-read piles. But life gets in the way and our best intentions to plough through at least a book a week never materialise.

If this sounds like you, it's time to kickstart your reading habit with one (or several) of the best short books of all time.

Adding a few of the best short books to your library is a great idea, especially over the summer.

Rather than beat yourself up for not reading more books, take a break from those long tomes and dive into a short and sweet novella instead.

This might get you out of your barely-any-attention-span funk or it may just be a way to indulge in stories without the investment of a doorstop of a novel at your bedside.

In our list below, you'll find our pick of the best short books of all time. We've included 17 fantastic stories, novellas, and even one really long poem, that you can gorge on in their entirety in an afternoon, meaning even the most time-poor amongst us can add a couple of ticks to that must-read list.

It's time to put down your phone, hit pause on Netlfix, share that selfie tomorrow and get stuck into one of the best short books right now – you won't regret it.

The best short books

1 . Animal Farm

Author: George Orwell

Yes, we know you read it at school. We all read it at school. But pick it up again now that you’re a little older, a little wiser, and a little more pissed off at the world’s political failings, and it’ll seem like a whole new and important read to you.

2 . The Art Of War

Author: Sun Tzu

"Been reading that book you told me about. You know, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I mean here's this guy, a Chinese general, wrote this thing 2400 years ago, and most of it still applies today! Balk the enemy's power. Force him to reveal himself. You know most of the guys that I know, they read Prince Machiavelli, and I had Carmela go and get the Cliff Notes once and he's okay. But this book is much better about strategy." – Tony Soprano, on finding mobster strategy inspiration in this book, in The Sopranos.

3 . The Old Man And The Sea

Author: Ernest Hemingway

It’s about an old man. And the sea. And the difficulties in admitting that we cannot control the uncontrollable.

4 . The Metamorphosis

Author: Franz Kafka

Felt a bit ropey when you woke up, did you? A touch hungover, perhaps? You know who definitely doesn’t care about your AM woes? Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in this, who “woke up one morning from unsettling dreams” to find he’d become a cockroach. Yep, a cockroach. Now take your aspirin, open up what’s often argued to be the finest short story ever written, and quit yo’ self-pitying.

5 . The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Perhaps the most classic tale of good versus evil, and a look into internal battles every man must deal with in life. The idea for this world-famous “shilling shocker” came to Stevenson in a dream, from which he woke in a blind fury and instantly began to write that morning.

6 . The Call Of The Wild

Author: Jack London

A hero to Hemingway and Kerouac, London led a crime-filled youth before knuckling down to write more than 50 books before his drug- and drink-assisted death aged just 40. This, his adventurous tale of a sled dog that’s stolen away from domestic life and hurled into a world of cruelty, is as much about canines as it is about the conflicts in humanity.

7 . The Dead

Author: James Joyce

TS Eliot believed this, the final story from Joyce’s Dubliners collection that centres around an epiphany about life and death, to be one of the greatest short stories ever written. Yeah, take his word for it. He knew a thing or two about books, he did.

8 . The Velveteen Rabbit

Author: Margery Williams

One of the most beautiful children's books ever made, The Velveteen Rabbit is all about a toy who is new to a nursery who wants to understand what being real means. And now we have tears all over our keyboard.

9 . Heart Of Darkness

Author: Joseph Conrad

A book perhaps best summed up by its most famous line, “The horror! The horror!” You’ve seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocolypse Now, right? Yep, all that madness was inspired by this. That should give you a good idea about how totally messed up and dark this work of literary art gets.

10 . Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall Street

Author: Herman Melville

Melville’s tale of the big white whale is a good ten times the length of this read, and even at a snail’s pace you’ll get through this peculiar and compelling story of one man’s isolation in just an afternoon.

11 . The Yellow Wallpaper

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A wonderful book that showcases abuse and the mental turbulence it can cause someone. Having had enough, a woman locks herself in her room to get away from her abusive husband and begins to obsess about the yellow wallpaper. This is a book that has myriad interpretations and is one you will want to reread endlessly.

12 . The Lottery

Author: Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is the master of eerie vibes, and The Lottery is one of her most famous stories. It's incredibly short, only 16 pages, which is why you'll often find it included in short story collections rather than as a standalone book. We're going to warn you in advance this isn't an easy read. It's horrifying in a way that burrows deep into your psyche. But if you like to feel truly shaken by the fiction you read, give The Lottery a whirl.

13 . Notes From The Underground

Author: Fydor Dostoyevsky

Cracking into Dostoyevsky seems like a daunting prospect. Hell, it is a daunting prospect – his finest work, Crime and Punishment, is very heavy going. This relatively bite-sized book questions our obsession with destruction and chaos, and is a good place to start before committing to the big boy stuff.

14 . The Turn Of The Screw

Author: Henry James

You’d need serious cojones to read this masterful gothic ghost chiller with the lights off. Serious cojones.

15 . The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner isn't a novel, it's a very, very long poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. You will find it in e-book and paperback form, though, often accompanied by beautiful illustrations. It tells the story of a sailor who has recently returned from a long sea voyage. It's beautifully-written, eerie and deeply atmospheric. You'll be lingering over the words and unique linguistic style as much as the vivid imagery.

16 . The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

If ever the was a book that holds a mirror up to the current society we live in, it is this one. Over the course of 32 pages, Le Guin showcases a utopia and the price that is paid to have a city of such splendour. This story has all the power of a boxer's fist to the gut

17 . Death In Venice

Author: Thomas Mann

Proof that the Devil really does make work for idle thumbs. An aging author’s escape from writer’s block leads him to Venice, and a world of fateful obsession, uncontrollable infatuation, painful lust, forbidden sex and doom.

• These are the best books to read before you kick the bucket .

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43 Short Classics You Have Time to Read

Want to be well-read in the classics, but don’t have time to read War & Peace? Grab one of these short classics you actually have time to read!

Do you want to be well-read but don’t have the time to sit down and read a 1,000+ page novel? While War and Peace is a long classic worth your time , how likely are you to have the time to sit down and read it?

Yet at the same time, you don’t want to feel like a complete fool when you converse with some crazy English major who only reads books written more than 100 years ago. What if you could feel well-read without taking up too much of your time?

Enter my list of short classics you actually have time to read. Though I listed all the short classics I could find, I’ve highlighted the ones that I think would be most valuable. For example, John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony is short, but I’ve never actually come across it in a conversation.

My highlighted list of short classics is more practical in nature. These featured short classics have conversational value.

If you hang around smart people long enough, you might actually have a chance to bring them up in conversation. Plus, you’d be surprised how often classics are referenced in popular culture. For example, Of Mice and Men is referenced in the tv shows Friends and Lost and even a Katy Perry song.

Not only was I aiming for short classics with conversational value but also I chose stories that each taught a valuable lesson. In these short classics, you can see perfect examples of human nature – the darkness, absurdities, and greed that are common to all men.

So, in 200 pages or less, here are some short classics you actually have time to read in your busy schedule.

Sidenote: I included both traditional classics and modern classics on my list. Also, page counts are from Goodreads.

Short Classics Under 100 Pages

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

William blake.

If you don’t have much time but want to read short classics, one of the best places to start is with poetry. With a poetry collection, you can easily sneak in a few poems in your free time – and a page of poetry is a lot quicker to read than a page of regular text. William Blake’s small collection of poetry is the shortest classic on my list. Showing the contrary states of the human soul, Blake aims to portray the innocence of childhood against the realities of a fallen world. A perfect example, is his famous poem, The Tyger , in which Blake intones of the tiger, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” 56 pages

Tyger Tyger burning bright In the forests of the night. -William Blake, The Tyger

The Misanthrope

Molière.

Besides poetry, another great way to enjoy short classics is to read classic plays. Even at the same number of pages, plays have much more spacing inside the text, making them quick reads. The second shortest item on my list of short classics is Molière’s famous play, The Misanthrope . This short work is a humorous look at the absurdities of human nature. Molière uses the protagonist, a man quick to judge others but blind to his own flaws, as a perfect satire of not just the French Aristocracy, but people in general.  64 pages

“Betrayed and wronged in everything I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is King And seek some spot unpeopled and apart Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.” -Molière, The Misanthrope

The Little Prince

Antoine de saint-exupéry.

If you aren’t in the mood for poetry or a play, The Little Prince is a short illustrated story full of morals – if only you have eyes to see them. It’s one of those classic books in which you can get out of it as much or as little as you want. This short allegory follows a young boy, the Little Prince, who decides to give up his pleasant life on his tiny planet to go discover the universe. Along the way, he encounters a strange place called Earth and learns about some of the absurdities of the adults.  93 pages

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

John Steinbeck

Imagine having the luckiest day of your life. In today’s world, that might mean winning the lottery. In John Steinbeck’s novella, The Pearl , it meant that a poor diver named Kino found the largest and most beautifully perfect pearl. His luck had changed … or had it? Short classics are best when they teach you about human nature, and The Pearl perfectly captures the vices of greed and envy. “Luck, you see, brings bitter friends,” as poor Kino learns of his fellow man. A short little story with a powerful lesson, The Pearl is a great introduction to the classics and John Steinbeck’s brilliant body of work.  96 pages

“For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more.” -John Steinbeck, The Pearl

Save for Later

Short Classics Under 150 Pages

Of Mice and Men

Pack your tissues because this classic novel is a book that will make you cry. This memorable story follows eternal optimists George and Lennie who share a common dream – to own some land of their own. When life leads them to work on a California ranch, they bump up against the reality that life can be extremely unfair. I think if you were to only read one of the short classics on my list, this would be the one. Steinbeck is a brilliant writer, and I promise that this story will stick with you long after you’ve read it.  112 pages

“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.” -Robert Burns, To A Mouse

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia woolf.

Based on two lectures she gave at women’s colleges at the University of Cambridge, A Room of One’s Own is an influential feminist text. Virginia Woolf believes that for a woman to truly write, she needs two things: money and a room to herself. While you may not agree with everything she says, this short essay covers the interesting topics of intellectual freedom and the process of creating. Of all the short classics on my list, I feel this is the most thought-provoking of them all. 112 pages

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” -Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

A Room with a View

E. m. forster.

Lucy has her whole life planned out. She’ll marry her perfectly respectable fiance Cecil and live a quiet peaceful life in England. However, when she visits Italy with her cousin Charlotte, Lucy’s life is turned upside down as she meets an explosion of colorful characters, including the passionate George. Can she accept the chaos of this new life or go back to her old ways in England? If you tend toward the romantic, this is the perfect choice for you.  119 pages

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.” -E. M. Forster, A Room with a View

Animal Farm

George orwell.

On the surface, Animal Farm is just a simple tale of animals revolting against the cruel farmer to set up their own government. In reality, Animal Farm is the perfect parable for the danger of giving up our freedoms for the sake of security. If you’ve ever wondered how a dictatorship comes to be, this classic short novel will show you. To get the most of this short classic, you’ll want to pair it with my favorite book of all time, George Orwell’s 1984 .  122 pages

“All animals are created equal. But some are more equal than others.” -George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Stranger

Albert camus.

Ready for a short novel that will make you think? Enter Albert Camus’ thought-provoking short classic book, The Stranger , the story of Mersault, a seemingly ordinary man without any feelings. After he kills a stranger on an Algerian beach, Mersault is put on trial for murder. On the surface, The Stranger seems like a simple novel, but if you care to look deeper, you can find the roots of many philosophical questions (though few answers).  123 pages

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” -Albert Camus, The Stranger

The Crucible

Arthur miller.

Based on actual people and events, The Crucible is a short classic play set during the Salem Witch Trials. In the 1690s, the townspeople of the small New England town of Salem are suddenly engulfed in rumors of witchcraft. The mass hysteria leads to the accusation and trial of Elizabeth Proctor for being a witch. Remember that Miller’s play was written in 1953, right in the middle of the Senator McCarthy era. The hysteria of the townspeople in the play perfectly mirrors the hysteria caused by McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade and reminds us to not let our fears get the better of us.  143 pages

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.” -Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Short Classics Under 200 Pages

Fahrenheit 451

Ray bradbury.

One of those short classics you probably read in high school, Ray Bradbury’s novel seems particularly prophetic in our current age of technology. Set in a society where printed books are considered dangerous, Fahrenheit 451 tells the tale of Guy Montag, a fireman whose job it is to search out and burn books until he begins to question everything he has ever known. Ray Bradbury’s novel serves as a warning against the dangers of censorship and the consequences of an addiction to television. 175 pages

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door … Who knows who might be target of a well-read man?” -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The Great Gatsby

F. scott fitzgerald.

I swear every American teenager reads this classic in high school, but if you happen to have skipped it, you really ought to read it now. Even if you read it in high school, you really should read it again as an adult. You’ll pick up a lot more of the underlying themes. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great American novel serves as the quintessential work of the Jazz Age. As the narrator enters the world of Long Island’s fabulously wealthy, we meet the mysterious Jay Gatsby and the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. A short but memorable book that everyone should read in their lifetime. 180 pages

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Lord of the Flies

William golding.

What happens when a group of English schoolboys is marooned on a deserted island? The above quote perfectly summarizes this novel. As the boys attempt to rule themselves, the dark side of human nature comes out in all its ugliness. Even if our society isn’t perfect, this book makes you glad that at least you live in a civilized society. If you didn’t by chance read this book growing up, now is a great time to pick it up. It’s probably even more terrifying to read as an adult imagining your kids as characters in the novel than it was to read as a teen. 182 pages

“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?” -William Golding, Lord of the Flies

The Awakening

Kate chopin.

Coming in just below the 200-page mark and the final of the short classics I’ll feature is Kate Chopin’s The Awakening . I can’t say I particularly liked this novel, but I still feel it deserves to be highlighted on my list of short classics. For its time, Kate Chopin’s tale of a woman’s infidelity was rather shocking and delves into the main character’s psychology. I’ve chosen more fun easy reads thus far, but I figure I might as well end on a short book that might impress the English major sitting next to you. 195 pages

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.” -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Do You Prefer Short Classics or Long Classic Books?

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with my Short Classics list? What short classic books have I forgotten? Or would rather have the depth of long classic books? As always, let me know in the comments!

More Classic Books Reading Lists:

• 100 Classic Books to Read Before You Die
• Long Classics Actually Worth Your Time
• 33 Children’s Classics Your Kids Will Love
• 27 Classic Books Published in the 1920s
• 29 Classic Books Published in the 1930s

Recommended

Reader Interactions

Mark Scheck says

January 13, 2020 at 1:53 pm

Thank you so much, going to try and jump into a few of these tonight!!

July 20, 2021 at 11:39 am

Great list! I read The Pearl for my challenge pick. Love your blog, thanks!

Leslie says

November 2, 2022 at 7:25 pm

Great list. Needed ideas for my neighborhood book club!!

Vianca says

December 9, 2022 at 12:39 am

Excited to dive into more classics!

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20 Beautiful Novels Under 100 Pages

• Post date 28/01/2022
• Post categories In Pretty Things

I wanted to create a list of novels under 100 pages because one needs a short and thus easy to carry in a bag kind of book while travelling, right? I took a two-hour ride the other day, and there wasn’t enough space for a massive book in my bag, and I couldn’t find a short novel in my bookcase. So I ended up reading from my phone on the train, and I must say I didn’t enjoy it a lot. I took a mental note to buy loads of short novels under 100 pages just to read on relatively short rides, and here we are.

Sometimes, when we read not so great novels in a row, we may end up with reader’s block. I think shorter books may help us to overcome it. I hope you’ll never have a reader’s block, but if you ever do, novels under 100 pages are here to help. I tried to find novels under 100 pages from various countries and genres. I hope you’ll find one to your liking. Enjoy!

If you want to read more brief novels check out:

20 Brilliant Novels Under 200 Pages

20 Excellent Novels Under 150 Pages

• Novels Under 100 Pages

Bonsai – Alejandro Zambra

Bonsai  is the story of Julio and Emilia, two young Chilean students who, seeking truth in great literature, find each other instead. Like all young couples, they lie to each other, revise themselves, and try new identities on for size, observing and analyzing their love story as if it’s one of the great novels they both pretend to have read. As they shadow each other throughout their young adulthoods, falling together and drifting apart, Zambra spins a formally innovative, metafictional tale that brilliantly explores the relationship among love, art, and memory. A Chilean writer among novels under 100 pages.

The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector

Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola and her philandering rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly and unloved. Yet telling her story is the narrator Rodrigo S.M., who tries to direct Macabéa’s fate but comes to realize that, for all her outward misery, she is inwardly free. Slyly subverting ideas of poverty, identity, love and the art of writing itself, Clarice Lispector’s audacious last novel is a haunting portrayal of innocence in a bad world. A Brazilian writer among novels under 100 pages.

The Royal Game A Chess Story – Stefan Zweig

On the deck of a transatlantic ocean liner, a crowd of passengers gathers to watch reigning chess world champion Mirko Czentovic take on a series of amateur challengers. The haughty grandmaster dispatches all of his opponents with ease, until one Dr B steps forward from the crowd―a passionate lover of the royal game who still bears the mental scars of imprisonment by the Nazis in his native Austria. The enigmatic genius reluctantly agrees to challenge Czentovic, but at what cost to his sanity?

Written during the Second World War,  The Royal Game  was the great Stefan Zweig’s final work―a searing, suspenseful tale of psychological torment and the price of obsession. An Austrian writer among novels under 100 pages.

The Children’s Bach – Helen Garner

Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world into their doorstep. And Athena finds herself straining at the confines of her life. Helen Garner portrays her characters with a clear eye for their dreams, their insecurities and their deep humanity in this intimate and engaging short novel, which was first published in 1984. The Children’s Bach is ‘a jewel,’ in Ben Lerner’s description, ‘beautiful, lapidary, rare.’ An Australian writer among novels under 100 pages.

Ascent – Ludwig Hohl

Two young men with very different personalities set out to climb a mountain. Ull, decisive and competent, has his eye on the goal: the summit. Johann, irresolute, is just along for the climb; after several setbacks, he gives up and turns back. Ull continues on–despite the near impossibility of summiting along, and ignoring all warning signs–determined to reach the summit in defiance of his friend. A Swiss writer among novels under 100 pages.

My Two Worlds – Sergio Chejfec

Approaching his fiftieth birthday, the narrator is wandering in an unfamiliar Brazilian city, in search of a park. A walker by inclination and habit, he decides to explore the city after attending a literary conference-he was invited to following the publication of his most recent novel, although, as he is informed via anonymous e-mail, has not been receiving good reviews. Initially thwarted by his inability to transpose the 2D information of the map onto the impassable roads and dead-ends of the city, once in the park he begins to see his own thoughts mirrored. An Argentine writer among novels under 100 pages.

If You’re Not Yet Like Me – Edan Lepucki

 Joellyn as judgmental as she is insecure tells her unborn daughter the story of her courtship with an unemployed, terribly-dressed man named Zachary. The novella is a romantic comedy if romantic comedies were dark and screwed up and no one got exactly what they wanted. An American writer among novels under 100 pages.

Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator of Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature. A Russian classic among novels under 100 pages.

Beauty Salon – Mario Bellatin

In a large, unnamed city, a strange, highly infectious disease begins to spread, afflicting its victims with an excruciating descent toward death, particularly unsparing in its assault of those on society’s margins. Spurned by their loved ones and denied treatment by hospitals, the sick are left to die on the streets until a beauty salon owner, whose previous caretaking experience extended only to the exotic fish tanks scattered among his workstations, opens his doors as a refuge. In the ramshackle Morgue, victim to persecution and violence, he accompanies his male guests as they suffer through the lifeless anticipation of certain death, eventually leaving the wistful narrator in complete, ill-fated isolation. A Mexican writer among novels under 100 pages.

Daisy Miller – Henry James

Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed. In  Daisy Miller  James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces. A classic among novels under 100 pages.

The Alienist – Machado De Assis

Brilliant physician Simao Bacamarte sacrifices a prestigious career to return home and educate himself to the budding field of psychology. Bacamarte opens the first asylum hoping to crown himself and his hometown with ‘imperishable laurels’. But then the good doctor starts to see signs of insanity in more and more of his neighbours. With dark humour and sparse prose, The Alienist lets the reader ponder who is really crazy after all. Originally published in 1882, readers will find that this tragically humorous novella remains as relevant as ever. A Brazilian novelist among novels under 100 pages.

The Old Man And The Sea – Ernest Hemingway

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses — specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. A gem among novels under 100 pages.

Foster – Claire Keegan

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home. In the strangers’ house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is. An Irish writer among novels under 100 pages.

Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a ‘hired girl’, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of American fiction’s finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio towards their tragic destinies. A classic among novels under 100 pages.

Sweet Days of Discipline Sweet Days of Discipline – Fleur Jaeggy

A novel about obsessive love and madness set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy’s eerily beautiful novel begins innocently enough: “At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell.” But there is nothing innocent here. With the off-handed remorselessness of a young Eve, the narrator describes her potentially lethal designs to win the affections of Fréderique, the apparently perfect new girl. In Tim Parks’ consummate translation (with its “spare, haunting quality of a prose poem,” TLS),  Sweet Days of Discipline  is a peerless, terrifying, and gorgeous work. A Swiss writer among novels under 100 pages.

Cold Enough for Snow – Jessica Au

A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo: they walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound.

Who is really speaking here – is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey? At once a careful reckoning and an elegy,  Cold Enough for Snow  questions whether any of us speak a common language, which dimensions can contain love, and what claim we have to truly know another’s inner world. An interesting one among novels under 100 pages.

Larger Than Life – Jodi Picoult

Alice is a researcher studying memory in elephants and is fascinated by the bonds between mother and calf – the mother’s powerful protective instincts and her newborn’s unwavering loyalty. Living on a game reserve in Botswana, Alice is able to view the animals in their natural habitat, as long as she obeys one important rule: she must only observe and never interfere.

Then she finds an orphaned young elephant in the bush and cannot bear to leave the helpless baby behind. Alice will risk her career to care for the calf. Yet what she comes to understand is the depth of a parent’s love. A contemporary among novels under 100 pages.

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer – Fredrik Backman

From the  New York Times  bestselling author of  A Man Called Ove ,  My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry ,  Britt-Marie Was Here , and  Anxious People  comes an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

With all the same charm of his bestselling full-length novels, here Fredrik Backman once again reveals his unrivaled understanding of human nature and deep compassion for people in difficult circumstances. This is a tiny gem with a message you’ll treasure for a lifetime among novels under 100 pages.

So Long a Letter – Mariama Ba

Written by Mariama Ba and translated from the French by Modupe Bode-Thomas,  So Long a Letter  won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and was recognised as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century in an initiative organised by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. 

This edition includes an introduction by Professor Kenneth W. Harrow of Michigan State University. A gem from Africa among novels under 100 pages.

The Necrophiliac – Gabrielle Wittkop

For more than three decades, Lucien – one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel – has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. This new translation introduces English readers to a masterpiece of French literature among novels under 100 pages. Like the best writings of Edgar Allen Poe or Baudelaire, Wittkop’s prose goes far beyond gothic horror to explore the melancholy in the loneliest depths of the human condition, forcing readers to confront their own mortality with unprecedented intimacy. A horror among novels under 100 pages.

Check out my other lists about books!

• 10 Uplifting Books
• Great Novels by Poets
• Feel-Good Cozy Mystery Series
• Summer Books – 20 Sexy Novels
• Autumn Books – 20 Cozy Novels
• Winter Books- 20 Atmospheric Novels
• Spring Books – 20 Lovely Novels
• 20 Captivating Gothic Books
• Japanese Books Under 200 Pages
• 20 Best Campus and Academic Novels
• 25 Intriguing Dark Academia Books
• 20 Literary Romance Novels
• 20 Best Food Culture and Food History Books
• Comforting Food Memoirs
• Top 5 Haiku Books
• 15 Best Eco-fiction Novels
• Perfect Christmas Books
• 20 Best Turkish Books
• Standalone Fantasy Books
• Fantasy Book Series
• Novels Based on Mythology and Legends
• Tarot Books to Learn From
• Books About Astrology
• Books About Esotericism
• Books for Book Clubs
• Magical Realism Books
• Mindfulness Books
• Captivating Reincarnation Books
• Remarkable Break-Up Novels
• Books for Travel Lovers
• Brilliant Mythology Books
• Egyptian Mythology Books
• Train Journey Books
• Books Set in Museums
• Books Set in Hotels
• Books Set on Islands
• Books Set in Forests
• Novels Set in Ancient Egypt
• Novels Set in Bookshops
• Novels Set in Libraries
• Books Set in the English Countryside
• Books Set in Edinburgh
• Books Set in Oxford
• Books Set in Istanbul
• Books Set in Rome
• Books Set in Portugal
• Books Set in Egypt
• Books Set in Greece
• Books Set in Mexico
• Books Set in South Africa
• Books Set in New York
• Books Set in Paris
• Books Set in Barcelona
• Books Set in Berlin
• Novels Set in China
• Books Set in Tokyo
• Books Set in Bali
• Novels Under 150 Pages
• Novels Under 200 Pages
• Novels About Older Woman, Younger Man Relationships
• Novels About Fortune Telling
• Novels About Translators and Interpreters
• Novels About Books
• Best Books About Books
• Novels About Vincent Van Gogh
• Novels About Leonardo da Vinci
• Books About Picasso
• Novels About Marriage
• Novels About Food
• Novels About Writers
• Novels About Music
• Books About Witches
• Books About Divorce
• Novels About Ernest Hemingway
• Best Books About Birds
• Best Books About Walking
• Best Books About Tea
• Books on Social Issues and Identity
• Novels About Scents & Perfume
• Exciting Thriller Novels of All Time
• Books on Art and Creativity
• Mind-Expanding Philosophy Books
• Historical Fiction Novels
• Beautiful Poetry Collections
• Powerful Books About Peace
• Beautiful Romance Novels

Are there any other novels under 100 pages that should be on this list? Please share your favourite books with us in the comments section below.

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50 more chapter books, 100-ish pages or less

As I mentioned last week,  here is a sequel to my list from a couple years ago featuring about  50 books that are 100-ish pages or less .  Today’s list features 50 more, most of which are part of a series so if you like one, it’s easy to find more.

Short chapter books suit many kinds of readers — those just moving beyond leveled readers, reluctant older readers, parents looking for a short read-aloud, travelers needing a slim book to tuck in a satchel, and gobs of readers in-between. If your student has been assigned summer reading pages, these could fit the bill nicely.

So, consider the various readers in your life as you scan through today’s list. I’ve tried to arrange them somewhat in ascending order of difficulty…thought that’s not an exact science! Sophistication of vocabulary and humor definitely increases as I go so if you’re looking for titles for older readers, keep that in mind.

Meet Yasmin! , written by Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Aly published in 2019 by Picture Window Books, Capstone 89 pages

It’s been deeply satisfying to see early chapter books and easy readers continue to diversify their characters. Yasmin comes from a Pakistani-American, Muslim family and she’s a fantastic, effervescent bridge for all children into a multicultural world.

In four separate stories, second-grader Yasmin bounds her way into map-making, enters an art contest, builds a cardboard city with her classmates, and plays dress-up with her grandmother. Strewn into the stories are a few Urdu words, some of which are in common usage such as naan, hijab, sari, while others will likely be new.  All are listed in a small glossary. There are also Pakistani facts, a recipe for mango lassi, and a little bookmark craft.   A second set of Yasmin stories is also available. Ages 5 and up.

The Man Who Wore All His Clothes The Woman Who Won Things The Cat Who Got Carried Away The Children Who Smelled a Rat written by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Katharine McEwen published in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005 by Candlewick Press all approximately 80 pages

These four books comprise a deliciously-oddball, heavily-illustrated series by beloved British children’s author Allan Ahlberg. Each contains a wild tale about the Gaskitt family.

from The Cat Who Got Carried Away

In four madcap adventures this quirky crew bumbles through near misses, foils robberies, solves mysteries, becomes mixed up with comedies of error, chases down runaway cats. Absurd, ridiculous, with copious asides from the narrator and plentiful jolly illustrations capering about the pages. A sprinkling of Britishisms are in the text which may need explanation for some. Silly delights for ages 5 and up.

Claude in the Country , written and illustrated by Alex T. Smith published in 2013 by Peachtree Publishers 95 pages

Have you met Claude yet? There are about 8 books in this series, from what I can tell, and they are mahvelous! This episode finds us at Woolybottom Farm with Claude, “a small plump dog who wears a beret and a very dashing sweater,” and his sidekick, Sir Bobblysock, who is…a stripey sock.

from Santa Claude

Having faced some dreary, rainy days, it’s time for these two to get out in the fresh air and liven up. Turns out Mrs. Cowpat can use their help on the farm as it’s County Fair Day and there’s so much to be done! Round up the sheep, prep the pigs for the Most Beautiful Pig contest, take some tea, and outsmart a raging bull in this humorous, lively story, illustrated with stylish, retro charm. These would work for read-alouds as well as for sturdy new readers.

Pigsticks and Harold and the Pirate Treasure , written and illustrated by Alex Milway published in 2016 by Candlewick Press 58 pages

There are a number of Pigsticks and Harold tales following the intrepid adventures of this unlikely pig-and-hamster duo.

In this episode they’ve got to save Tuptown from the dastardly and greedy Sir Percival Snout by tracking down Pirate Pigbeard’s lost treasure. Seafaring mishaps, monstrous birds, and buried treasure chests, oh my! Longish pages of text punctuated by Milway’s energetic, personality-laden cartoon drawings, and peppered with piggy puns. Ages 4 and up.

Narwhal’s Otter Friend , written and illustrated by Ben Clanton published in 2019 by Tundra 64 pages

If you haven’t met the Narwhal books, by all means dive into these oceanic, nutty, comics-style adventures!

This is the fourth in this lively series about jolly, friendly Narwhal and his deep-sea sidekick, Jelly. In this episode, Jelly is feeling mighty threatened by Narwhal’s new friendship with Otty, a sea otter. Brimming with tidal waves of action, awash with puns, and even sporting a few marine facts, these books are ideal for older, reluctant readers who want sophistication but need shorter, non-intimidating word- and page-counts.

That said, they’re a hoot for a wide age range and such an enticement to the wonderful world of story. Ages 4 and up.

Violet Mackerel’s Natural Habitat , written by Anna Branford, illustrated by Elanna Allen originally published in Australia; first US edition 2013 by Atheneum, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 100 pages

I love the Violet Mackerel series. Violet is a sympathetic, curious, interesting person with an endearingly naive personality that pulls us into her world. The plots in the series tend to revolve around nature and family rather than being school-centered, which is a win for me.

Violet has a Theory of Helping Small Things which, in this episode, leads to making a tiny habitat for a ladybug named Small Gloria.  Small things, however, are tricky to understand properly. Violet has to reckon with the disappointing results of her “care” even as she and her sister work out a related, lovely display for the science fair. Gentle, lovely, with a distinct voice. Read it aloud or hand it to ages 5 and up.

Anne Arrives , adapted by Kallie George, illustrated by Abigail Halpin published in 2018 by Tundra Books 64 pages

Anne’s Kindred Spirits , adapted by Kallie George, illustrated by Abigail Halpin on shelves May 7, 2019 from Tundra Books 72 pages

These adaptations of Anne of Green Gables waft as much charm as the White Way of Delight. They are marvelous pathways into the classic series for younger readers.

Anne Arrives contains just that much of the story — Anne Shirley’s mistaken arrival at Green Gables and the sorely trying days when her staying and going are sorted out by Marilla and Matthew.  The second volume, which I haven’t seen yet, introduces Diana Barry and contains the missing brooch and church picnic incidents. Confections for ages 5 and up.

The Cat Club Series , written and illustrated by Esther Averill originally published 1944-1972; reissued by The New York Review Children’s Collection

I remember as a child reading stories about little Jenny Linsky, a stray cat taken in by the kindly Captain Tinker, and the various members of the Cat Club, full of vivid personalities and lively adventures. This winter, I checked out the whole series from my library to give them a re-read and am listing them for you here today by degree of difficulty, rather than by date of publication. They encompass quite a span of reading levels.  All of them could be used as gentle read-alouds with children as young as 4 or 5. They make great choices for young-but-advanced readers with their enticing, yet age-appropriate plot lines.

The Fire Cat 63 pages

This is the only volume that has been published as an early reader. It tells the story of Pickles, a large spotted cat who has no home and unfortunately takes out his boredom and excess energy on smaller neighborhood cats. His life takes a turn for the much-better when he’s adopted by the local firehouse.

Pickles enters later stories as well. And here I’ll add that the lack of synchronization between these cats’ various origin stories is just something you have to take in stride if you make your way through the series!

Jenny and the Cat Club — 160 pages

This New York Review Children’s Collection title has collected five books in one volume which will be much easier for most of you to access than the charming little originals. The five books are: The Cat Club, Jenny’s First Party, When Jenny Lost Her Scarf, Jenny’s Adopted Brothers , and How the Brothers Joined the Cat Club .

Each of them is about 30 pages long, generously illustrated with Averill’s darling pen-and-ink drawings with those zingy flashes of red and mustard yellow. The Cat Club is the very first book in which we are introduced to shy Jenny Linsky and witness her entry into the exceedingly-orderly club, a process which requires a cat to do something special. In Jenny’s case, she discovers that she is an ice-skating cat!

Later stories find the cats gathering for a midnight dance, rescuing Jenny’s scarf from the unruly neighborhood dog, Rob the Robber!, as well as introducing Checkers and Edward, Jenny’s adopted brother cats.

Jenny’s Birthday Book 44 pages

This very short story has been published as its own picture book. It’s a thoroughly happy gathering of all Jenny’s Cat Club friends for a midnight party in Central Park complete with a lovely picnic, presents and cake, and dancing the hornpipe.

Vintage at its best, for ages 2 and up.

School for Cats 32 pages Jenny’s Moonlight Adventure 32 pages

These two books are similar to the five gathered in the above volume in both length and difficulty. They are delicious little stories for a reader who has graduated from leveled readers. Their trim, slim size, and pages strewn with Averill’s jaunty illustrations make them tremendously inviting.

School for Cats presents a more emotionally-dark plot than the other stories, with Jenny’s enrollment in a boarding school where she meets Pickles the Firecat for the first time and is quite harassed and agitated by his aggressive play. In the end, Jenny takes matters in hand and dive-bombs his zooming, clanging, frightening fire engine, which stops Pickles in his tracks and the two of them call truce.

Jenny’s Moonlight Adventure tells the story of brave Jenny as she rescues Madame Butterfly’s nose flute — yes, there is a beautiful Persian cat in the Club who plays lovely melodies on a nose flute! — outwitting the gang of unruly dogs barring the door.

Jenny Goes to Sea 128 pages The Hotel Cat 162 pages Captains of the City Streets 147 pages

These last three volumes are longer and quite a bit more advanced than the other Cat Club books. They don’t really belong on this 100-ish pages and under list, but I’ll add them anyway so you can view the whole series.

Jenny Goes to Sea tells the story of Jenny and her two brothers on an around-the-world ocean voyage with stops in numerous ports including Capetown, Zanzibar, and Siam. The three cats become acquainted with Jack Tar, the ship’s cat, and have a taste of many cultures during these brief stops.

The Hotel Cat introduces yet another friend, Tom, who works at the Royal Hotel keeping the rodent population down and fulfilling other surprising roles for some of the long-term residents, particularly elderly Mrs. Wilkins. When the Big Freeze hits New York City, and boilers all over the city break down, Jenny and the entire Cat Club find themselves installed at the hotel, where with Jack’s expert help, they put on a magical Stardust Winter Ball!

Captains of the City Streets reaches back to introduce us to two Cat Club members, Sinbad and The Duke who once lived the lives of tramps, such a free and easy lifestyle, and then went in search of a place of their own where they could better practice their favorite pastime, pugilism! Of course, this brings them into the vicinity of the Cat Club, a rules-oriented group if ever there was. It’s not an easy fit for these two street-wise fellows, but eventually they become a beloved part of the circle.

The Buried Bones Mystery — written by Sharon Draper, illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson originally published in 1994; this edition 2006 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 94 pages

The Clubhouse Mysteries is a multicultural mystery series — hurrah! Sharon Draper wrote this series 25 years ago, and gave it a more recent, smart update to include some computer-age details that ring true to today’s readers.

Featuring four boys from culturally and racially diverse backgrounds — Rico, Ziggy, Jerome and Rashawn — , this book’s unique, authentic voice is a welcome change from other mystery series for young readers. In this episode the boys are facing a summer vacation without their favorite basketball court, destroyed by vandals and awaiting repairs. So they build a secret clubhouse and in the process unearth more secrets than they ever imagined! These four guys are just the sort I’d like to have living next door. An excellent series for ages 8 and up.

The Littles , written by John Peterson, illustrated by Roberta Carter Clark published in 1967 by Scholastic 80 pages

This long series of books by John Peterson features one of many children’s favorite set of protagonists — miniature people. If you are familiar with The Borrowers, the Littles bear a great deal of similarity but the stories are far simpler, perfectly accessible for young readers or listeners. My own reluctant reader read many of these. The vocabulary and sentence construction are great for struggling readers, yet the action is nicely satisfying.

In this series opener, we meet the Littles, who are just inches tall and have tails. Mr. and Mrs. Little, Tom and Lucy, Uncle Pete and Granny Little all live in the home of the Biggs, borrowing from them and helping in return in a nice, reciprocal fashion, unbeknownst to the Biggs. When the Biggs go on holiday for three months, and let their house to the Newcombs, troubles and dangers begin in earnest. Scattered graphite illustrations. A spicy adventure for ages 4 and up.

Tashi , written by Anna Fienberg and Barbara Fineberg, illustrated by Kim Gamble first published in 1995; this edition 2006 by Allen & Unwin 63 pages

Tashi is a gnomish fellow who has just escaped from a cruel master and arrived — by swan — in Jack’s neighborhood.

As Tashi regales Jack with tales of his marvelous adventures, Jack passes along the stories to his parents who merely humor their son, convinced he’s adopted some sort of imaginary friend. Fabulously imaginative adventures, prolifically illustrated in graphite drawings, draw us into this charming world. There are gobs of Tashi stories, which are now being published in large collections rather than this sweetly slim size. Ages 4 and up.

The Miniature World of Marvin & James , written by Elise Broach, illustrated by Kelly Murphy published in 2014 by Square Fish, Macmillan 104 pages

This is the first in a series capitalizing on something that bewitches every child — miniature worlds. For Marvin is a tiny, clever beetle belonging to a young boy named James, and we get to see the world through his eyes.

James is heading out on a week-long vacation leaving Marvin a bit bored. In search of adventure, he and his small cousin Elaine venture into Mr. Pompaday’s study where they crawl through an enticing little tunnel and find a deep bed of soft wood-flakes perfect for diving into…that is to say, they’ve landed inside of his electric pencil sharpener! Things get quite dicey when Mr. Pompaday unexpectedly returns. It’s a playful, exciting, and tender story. Large font size, plentiful illustrations revealing the personalities of these two little bugs, and a gentle tone make this just right for young listeners and readers.

The Case of the Weird Blue Chicken , written by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Kevin Cornell published in 2014 by Atheneum, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Children 103 pages

This is the second book in the smashing Chicken Squad series starring four hilarious little chicks busy solving mysteries and fighting crime.

Written with a large splash of cheekiness and a great dollop of film noir flare, the tales of these four will knock your socks off. In this episode they’re on the trail of two intertwining crimes — a stolen birdhouse and some stolen acorns. Bumbling their way through interviews with a weird blue chicken who’s not a chicken at all, and tracking down the clues of the case, they finally solve the mystery and bring peace to the backyard once again. Witty, sophisticated, perfectly-paced, illustrated with zing, it’s a bit like reading a Pixar short. Ages 4 and up.

Good Night, Sleep Tight: Eleven-and-a-half Good Night Stories with Fox and Rabbit , written and illustrated by Kristina Andres first published in Germany in 2016; English language edition by Gecko Press, 2018 59 pages

In eleven very-very short chapters, we tag along with good pals Fox and Rabbit as they test out various ways to get to sleep and wish a pleasant good night to one another and their dear friends.

Charming, gently humorous escapades flitter through this delightful book, heavily illustrated with warmth and affection. It would make a fine read-aloud for preschoolers, or hand it to a sturdy reader ages 6 and up.

The Best-Loved Doll , written by Rebecca Caudill, illustrated by Elliot Gilbert originally published in 1962; reissued by Square Fish, Macmillan in 2012 64 pages

This was one of my girls’ favorites when they were very young, and I’m so glad to see it in print and as fresh as ever.

Betsy has been invited to a party and asked to bring a doll along. Just one doll. Prizes will be given for the oldest doll, the best-dressed doll, and the doll who can do the most things. This puts Betsy in a quandary. She has dolls that fit those categories, but its her ragged favorite, Jennifer, that she chooses to bring. Discover what happens in this blush pink, tea party, dolly-filled, tender story affirming kindness and long-haul loving. Read it aloud to ages 4 and up or hand it to a sturdy reader.

Kung Pow Chicken: Let’s Get Cracking! , written and illustrated by Cyndi Marko published in 2014 by Scholastic 72 pages

This heavily-illustrated book could almost sneak into the comic/graphic novel category, but for the most part it’s told without typical graphic-style panels.

Gordon Blue and his little bro Benedict took a tumble into a vat of their scientist uncle’s toxic sludge one day which has turned them into superheroes! Now they’ve got their work cut out for them, stopping one nefarious character at the Fowl Fall Festival from cashing in on some weirdly-glowing cookies. Riotous action and oodles of eggy-puns for ages 7 and up. There are several more Kung Pow books available.

Daisy Dawson on the Farm , written by Steve Voake, illustrated by Jessica Meserve published in 2012 by Candlewick 89 pages

The first of the Daisy Dawson books made it on my earlier best-of-books-under-100-pages list. There are a number of titles in this series starring an outdoorsy girl who can talk and understand animals from spiders to horses. I’m featuring another one today in the hopes you’ll choose to meet her!

This episode finds the farm animals in a dither due to a drought. They are a hot and bothered crew, especially the ducks and newts whose pond has dried up. Daisy works with the whole gang, trying out all kinds of ideas to remedy the situation in this funny, spirited, warm story. Illustrated with flair, vivacity, and grace, these make fine read-alouds or great stories for sturdy young readers.

Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Stomps the Snow , written by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Miguel Benitez published in 2014 by Albert Whitman & Company 84 pages

This is another great, multicultural series with quite a few titles available.  I read this splendidly snowy title in the midst of Minnesota’s snowiest-ever February, so it was just the right cup of tea for me!

Freddie is one of the nicest, kindest boys you’ll meet.  Plus, he’s got a pair of sneakers that give him super-powers  —  Zapato Power he calls it. In a flash, he’s whistling along at lightning speed, performing heroic deeds in the service of his community. Thus these stories feature a dashing combination of energy, excitement, and tenderheartedness that I love. When a blizzard hits Starwood Park, it’s Freddie to the rescue, this time with super-powered snowshoes, digging folks out from mountains of snow and meanwhile nabbing a thief! Highly accessible text, beautifully formatted for new readers. Ages 5 and up.

Lulu and the Cat in the Bag , written by Hilary McKay, illustrated by Priscilla Lamont originally published in the UK; first U.S. edition 2013 by Albert Whitman & Company 83 pages

The Lulu books are one of my favorite early chapter book series, written by a brilliant author, Hilary McKay, whose delightful humor and keen sense of humanity shine through everything she touches.

In this episode, animal-loving Lulu rescues yet another creature, this time a large marmalade cat left, terribly sadly, on her doorstep tied up in a sack! Beastly. Despite her Nan’s protests, Lulu determines to introduce it into the menagerie already in her household. But — the cat and dogs simply do not get on and Lulu is left to find another new and loving home for the cat. It turns out to be a most surprising solution! Warm, hopeful, well-written stories to read aloud or hand to ages 6 and up.

Stuart’s Cape , written by Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Martin Matje published in 2002 by Orchard Books, Scholastic 57 pages

Sara Pennypacker is an enormously-talented writer, author of the wonderful Clementine series among other titles. This slim volume packs quite a juicy punch as it unreels the surprising adventures of Stuart, a small boy about to begin third grade in a new school, which is entirely too much to worry about, for sure.

Stuart wishes he had super powers, to have some extraordinary adventure to while away the miserable days of waiting for and dreading school. That’s when he is struck by a brilliant idea: a cape! Whoever heard of a bonafide adventure without a cape?! And Stuart’s Cape leads him on far more fantastical adventures than you can believe. Funny, quirky, warmhearted and hopeful in both text and illustration. It’s been published separately like this, or in a volume along with its sequel. Ages 6 and up.

Georgie Lee , written by Sharon Philips Denslow, illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins published in 2002 by Greenwillow Books 91 pages

Here’s a wonderful little read starring a nine-year-old boy and his dear, spunky grandmother as they spend the summer together on her farm.

Redolent with both the simplicity and vivid nature of rural life, their adventures encompass climbing trees, evading wicked thunderstorms, peeping around an abandoned farmhouse, cooling off in the pond…and always, always include their interactions with that smart, corn-loving, troublesome cow, Georgie Lee. Lightly illustrated with Perkins’ classy pen-and-ink drawings. For kids who appreciate the out-of-doors and the subtle humor that living things bring to our lives, this is a gem. Ages 6 and up.

Yours Sincerely, Giraffe , written by Megumi Iwasa, illustrated by Jun Takabatake first published in Japan 2001; American edition in 2017 by Gecko Press 102 pages

I love a good quirky story, and I love stories in translation, so this book starts right off with two stars.

Take one bored giraffe, one newly-inagurated pelican mail delivery service, one ocean-going seal delivery service, and one perky penguin studying abroad under the tutelage of Professor Whale. Strike up a friendly penpalship between the good-natured giraffe and penguin, add in  humorous misunderstandings and a delightful sense of curiosity, and you’ve got a thoroughly friendly, winning tale. A jaunty narrative voice, numerous letters to read, and plentiful friendly, wobbly line drawings add to the fun. Ages 7 and up.

A sequel, Dear Professor Whale , follows these friends as they put on the Whale Point Olympics and is equally peachy!

The Pirate Pig , written by Cornelia Funke, translated by Oliver Latsch, illustrated by Kerstin Meyer first published in Germany in 1999; Englisht edition 2015 by Random House 55 pages

Talented storyteller Cornelia Funke has written several small chapter books ideal for young readers, lusciously illustrated in full color, packed with plucky adventure.

This one is about Stout Sam and his deckhand Pip who get the surprise of their life one day when they find a pig in a barrel washed up on Butterfly Island. Julie is no ordinary pig. She’s got a nose for sunken treasure! When rotten Barnacle Bill hears the news, he pig-naps Julie, and we’re off on a wild rescue adventure! Shiver-me-timbers pizzazz for ages 5 and up.

Rosie Revere and the Raucous Riveters , written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts published in 2018 by Abrams 125 pages + back matter

Are you familiar with the best-selling picture book series by this author and illustrator? Beginning about 5 years ago, they’ve produced some jazzy books highlighting three ace, talented kids — Rosie the Engineer, Iggy Peck the Architect, and Ada Twist the Scientist, a happy amalgam of science, creativity, teamwork, and history.

Now they’ve launched a series of short chapter books starring the same trio. This first one finds Rosie trying to engineer a gizmo to enable her Aunt Rose’s friend, June, to participate in an art contest — despite the fact June has just broken both of her wrists! As one iteration of Rosie’s invention after the next fails, she’s left with no choice but to tap into the resources of a neighbor she doesn’t really know, but knows she dislikes. Surprises galore are in store for Rosie and her friends as they learn about valves, the Riveters of WWII, and how appearances can be deceiving. The second volume in this series came out in April, 2019. Ages 6 and up.

Jasper John Dooley: Library Public Enemy #1 , written by Caroline Adderson, illustrated by Mike Shiell published in 2016 by Kids Can Press 123 pages

This series, coming out of Canada, also features an eminently-likeable young boy who reminds me a bit of Billy Miller , a high compliment indeed! There are at least five titles to date. I jumped in with this one as my library doesn’t even have the first book in the series, Star of the Week , and I didn’t feel lost.

A pekingese named Molly is a new face at the library, where kids can take 5 minute turns reading to her. Molly seems a tad bored by all the stories, Jasper thinks, and he is determined to find just the right book to please her when it’s his turn to read. He checks out some books in order to practice, and that’s when disaster strikes. Jasper plans to read in the bathtub. He’s being ever so careful, but ploop! goes the book into the water, and his dad’s attempts to remedy the sopping book track decidedly downhill. Jasper is in a wild panic over his new status as Book Killer. How will he pay for the book? Can he read to Molly even though he’s a book destroyer? The real concerns of a tenderhearted, responsible young boy and his monumental efforts to fix problems shine in this fine story generously strewn with mayhem, problem-solving, integrity, and friendship. Read it aloud or hand it to sturdy readers looking for something a mite longer. Ages 5 and up.

The Mystery of Meerkat Hill , written by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrated by Iain McIntosh published in 2012 by Random House 90 pages

This is another of the Precious Ramotswe mysteries for young readers, written by the author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. In it, Precious meets two new students in her school, a sister and brother named Teb and Pontsho, and their pet meerkat, Kosi.

One day, the family cow of these friends goes missing, and Precious, teaming up with the clever Kosi, helps sort things out. After all, she wants to be a great detective when she grows up! These are charming stories, written with an old-fashioned, gentle tone and a distinctive, folksy, storyteller style. In addition, they’re set in Botswana, of course, with all the colorful details of that land and culture. Handsomely illustrated in woodblock prints, they would make fine read-alouds for ages 5 and up.

McBroom’s Wonderful One-Acre Farm , written by Sid Fleischman, illustrated by Quentin Blake originally written in 1966, 1967, and 1969; published in one volume in 1992 by Greenwillow Books 63 pages

These uproarious tall tales were originally published as separate volumes and they are dear to my heart as my own reluctant reader found them funny and enticing enough to make his way through as a struggling elementary-aged boy.

Each story spins a whopper of a tall tale about Josh McBroom and his mighty, wonder-working, one-acre farm in Iowa. Ridiculous, over-the-top fun, full of puns, beefy vocabulary, and twangy speech make it a sophisticated read, even though the stories are so short. Quentin Blake’s wobbly, eccentric drawings are the cherry on top. A blast for ages 8 and up.

The Strongest Girl in the World originally published in Great Britain in 1999 92 pages

The Invisible Boy originally published in Great Britain in 2002 106 pages

Written and illustrated by Sally Gardner Published in one volume in 2007 by Dial Books for Young Readers

Yippy skippy! Two books in one! Read one, and when you’re finished, flip the book over and start from the other side to read the second story! Such an enticing concept. They’re a part of Gardner’s Magical Kids series, full of good old-fashioned fantasy for young readers.

Both stories are fantastical tales brimming with energy, magic, and fun. The Strongest Girl in the World tells of little Josie Jenkins, aged 8-3/4 who, one ordinary day, discovers that she has inexplicable, stupendous strength!! She hoists cars with one finger, lifts a house off its foundations with a mere shrug. When greedy Mr. Two Suit attempts to exploit her extraordinary powers, however, the luster of her trick quickly dulls. What’s a strong girl to do?

The Invisible Boy ‘s parents win a trip to the moon and young Sam is left in the care of a Roald Dahl-esque neighbor, Hilda Hardbottom, whose nefarious designs on Sam’s parents’ travel insurance sprout into wicked schemes. However, she’s reckoned without the arrival of a small, spotted alien named Splodge, an invisibility patch, and the kind heart of her hen-pecked husband, Ernie. Extra-terrestrial fun! Both volumes can be read aloud or handed to kids ages 8 and up.

Space Taxi: Water Planet Rescue , written by Wendy Mass and Michael Brawer, illustrated by Elise Gravel published in 2014 by Little, Brown and Company 115 pages

This is the second Space Taxi book I’ve featured.  I think there are six of them in the series thus far. These super sci-fi adventures are an inter-planetary, most extraordinary blast!

In this episode, Archie Morningstar, his dad, and Pockets the cat — all of whom secretly work for the Intergalactic Security Force — are summoned to the planet Nautilus in the Triangulum Galaxy to assess reports of strange weather disturbances, a dramatic shrinking of their ocean waters on which vast numbers of their citizens depend. Rocket through space, dodge asteroids, dive underwater and help defeat a villainous organization! Large print with a few black-and-white illustrations. Ages 7 and up.

How to Save Your Tail*: *If You Are a Rat Nabbed by Cats who Really Like Stories about Magic Spoons, Wolves with Snout-Warts, Big, Hairy Chimney Trolls…and Cookies Too , written by Mary Hanson, illustrated by John Hendrix published in 2007 by Schwartz & Wade 93 pages

This extraordinary story will entertain children and adults alike, making it a fine read-aloud choice, or a superb story for readers in need of something short yet sophisticated. And how do you like that title?!

Employing a confounded mash-up of fairy tales from 1001 Arabian Nights to Cinderella, loads of cheek, and three main characters bursting from the seams with personality, Mary Hanson spins a vivacious, humorous, storytellers tale. Bob the rat has been caught by two palace kitties, Brutus and Muffin. Just as they’re about to devour him, Bob’s delicious home-baked chocolate chip cookies and his penchant for telling delectable stories come to the rescue. As long as he can keep the cats craving more of his adventurous family history, Bob stands a chance of survival. And what a history it is! John Hendrix’s zesty illustrations punctuate the pages, decorate the end-papers, and even illustrate a complicated family tree for our reference. Kids who know their fairy tales will especially appreciate this, but anyone liking a hefty serving of wit will enjoy it as well. The sophisticated text demands a strong reader. Listeners ages 6 and up.

Hobart , written by Anita Briggs, illustrated by Mary Rayner published in 2002 by Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers 57 pages

Hobart and his siblings live happy lives on Farmer Mills’ farm. He is a generous caretaker, and they are exceptionally intelligent, talented pigs.

However, when the old gander spills the beans that pigs are destined to become bacon, it strikes terror into their hearts. It’s up to Hobart, an unusually hopeful fellow, to rescue them from certain doom. The plot of this book bears similarity, of course, to Charlotte’s Web, but is far shorter and less complex. Despite the cheery yellow cover, the vocabulary is surprisingly challenging and the threats of a Nasty Butcher and a scene where the farmer gives him a good punch in the chops(!!) all make this story quite a bit grittier than you might suppose. Ages 7 and up.

A Mouse Called Wolf , written by Dick King-Smith, illustrated by Jon Goodell published in 1997 by Random House Children’s Books 98 pages

Dick King-Smith was a prolific British author who left us dozens of slim books for elementary age children, often centered around the lives of personable animals — pigs,  mice, parrots. My children read a good many of them when they were first branching into independent reading. Full of mustard, unsentimental, and somehow plausible even with the animals’ uncanny ability to talk and scheme.

This one is about a small mouse, the youngest of thirteen children and smallest of all, who happens to live in the skirting board in a classical pianist’s house, and who discovers that he has an enchanting singing voice. His mother names him Wolfgang Amadeus Mouse. Wolf for short. His blossoming friendship with homeowner Mrs. Honeybee fills this story with an unusual amount of classical music references. It’s a clever story, especially well-suited to musical kids. A stout vocabulary means this is for strong readers or listeners ages 7 and up. If this doesn’t suit you, do look up other King-Smith titles such as Babe  (on which the film was based) or Lady Lollipop .

The Toothpaste Millionaire , written by Jean Merrill, illustrated by Jan Palmer originally published in 1972 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 119 pages

My kids loved this story of entrepreneur extraordinaire Rufus Mayflower as told by his good friend Kate MacKinstrey. First published almost 50 years ago, it is as fresh and relevant as ever, though the illustrations are a bit dated.

Rufus thinks toothpaste is vastly overpriced considering his granddad brushes his teeth with bicarbonate of soda. Surely whipping up something effective and tasty can’t be that difficult. And for a kid as resourceful and optimistic as Rufus, that’s absolutely true! He’s also a genius at gathering others into the scheme, generously sharing his profits and giving credit where credit is due. Zoom along with the gang as they become the nicest millionaires you ever met, all in just one year!

Touching on themes of racism, sexism, economic equity, friendship, finance, and math, this book is absolutely unique, empowering, and kindhearted. Ages 8 and up.

Mac Undercover , written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Mike Lowery published in 2018 by Orchard Books, Scholastic 149 pages

This book is much longer than what I was originally looking for here, but it is so prolifically illustrated that I think it fits well with these shorter, less-intimidating chapter books I’m collecting. It’s a great choice especially for reluctant readers with its cheeky tone and James Bond aura.

Mac B is just a kid, but he gets called on, quite out of the blue, by the Queen of England, engaged to be a spy and track down the stolen crown jewels. No big deal, right? Off he jets with nary a backward glance, only hoping to be back in time for Derek Lafoy’s birthday party. Once in London, he banters with the Queen, meets her flock of corgis, and following the thief’s trail, hydrofoils it across the English Channel to France and on to Moscow…yeah, it’s quite a humdinger of a case. It is set in the 80s with many cultural references to that era.

Mac Barnett hits elementary-school humor out of the ball park time after time. Here his dry, over-the-top, wildly-implausible tale will win fans in a hot second. Heaps of bold illustrations in comic style jazz up the pages enormously. And there’s already a couple of sequels. I wish these had been out when my reluctant reader was a 9-year-old boy. Ages 8 or 9 and up.

The Night Fairy , written by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Angela Barrett published in 2010 by Candlewick 117 pages

This gorgeous, sophisticated story spills along with evocative prose and exquisite, full-color illustrations. It’s a lovely read-aloud or an excellent fantasy for strong readers looking for a short novel.

Flory, a tiny night fairy, is the victim of mistaken identity as a youngster, her wings munched by a tiny bat who assumes she is a moth. Thus damaged, she determines to become a creature of daylight, going about the garden while bats sleep. The story of how she survives and confronts her world is a enchanting, fierce, lush, and nature-rich tale. A thoroughly original fantasy for ages 9 and up.

Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring , written by Enigma Alberti, illustrated by Tony Cliff published in 2016 by Workman Publishing 75 pages + back matter

This is one of three in the Spy on History series, each of which tells the story of a real individual, while introducing an intricate mystery which the reader can try to solve using hidden clues and the book’s spy craft materials.

The story in this volume is about a free African-American woman who worked as a Union spy, going undercover as a maid in Jefferson Davis’s household. It’s a compelling story in itself, and accessible to sturdy readers ages 8 or 9 and up. Meanwhile, the mystery to be solved involves locating Mary’s Secret Diary. There’s a replica Civil War cipher ring, a piece of red acetate, and more to help you, all sealed in an envelope inside the book, as well as a host of hidden clues and codes in the illustrations. I did not try to solve this on my own.

At the end of the book is a sealed section of pages which walk you through all the clues, codes, and devices needed to crack it and wow!, it is extremely complicated! Reading comments on Amazon, it seems like most people did not really solve the code and those who did had to settle in, parent and child, for numerous hours of code-cracking. I think these are great little historical adventures regardless of whether you take the initiative to crack the code. For those who have the thirst for codes and spylore, all the better! Enticingly presented history for sure!

Finding Langston , written by Lesa Cline-Ransome published in 2018 by Holiday House 104 pages

Winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor this year, Finding Langston is a moving novel about a young boy’s search for healing and a sense of home. Written in lilting, rich prose, set in post-war Chicago in the Bronzeville neighborhood, it stole many hearts last year!

Langston is 11 years old. After his dear mother’s death, he and his dad move to Chicago, a world away from his grandmother, family, friends, and warm home-culture of Alabama. It’s a rough transition for many reasons including grief, poverty, loneliness, and bullying at school. In the midst of it, Langston discovers a library open to black folks like him, and a poet who voices his innermost thoughts and feelings both of which bring hope and healing.

Kudos to Lesa Cline-Ransome for writing such a complex, sophisticated, meaty story, in a short format that doesn’t overwhelm young readers. It’s a story weighty with the Black experience of the ’40s, the voice of Langston Hughes, the triumph of community libraries, and the power of poetry to address our human condition and move our souls. Not illustrated. Highly accessible writing but emotional resonance suited best for ages 9 through adult.

I do hope you find some gems to suit your readers! You can also find dozens of first chapter books on my list here   — these are all on the easier end of reading ability — and novels grouped in a variety of categories via the Fiction tab at the top of the blog.

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14 Comments

Wow, what a great selection. Thank you!

So many treasures on those library shelves 🙂

Another great list. Will be checking out many of them soon. You can never have too many good read-alouds!

Agreed, Catherine! Reading aloud is one of the most delightful means of together-ing!

My gosh–what a feast!!! Thanks so much for mentioning all these wonderful books.

Thanks, Annina! I love how many really great stories come in these smaller-size packages 🙂

[…] Anne’s Kindred Spirits, Kallie George and Abigail Halpin, 2019, Tundra This is the second book in the charming Anne of Green Gables series that’s being re-crafted for young readers. Lovely through and through. […]

[…] Dear Professor Whale written by Megumi Iwasa, illustrated by Jun Takabatake […]

[…] Good Night Sleep Tight: Eleven-and-a-Half Good Night Stories with Fox and Rabbit […]

[…] Good Night, Sleep Tight: Eleven-and-a-half Good Night Stories with Fox and Rabbit –Kristina Andres Immensely charming, friendly stories. […]

This list is perfect for my 5-year-old son! We just read The Cat Club & The Hotel Cat, so I’m sure a bunch of the others will be great, too. 100-ish pages is our sweet spot right now as we start branching out into chapter books. (I also realized I have a backlog of new posts I missed in these past crazy months to check out — excited to sink in and find some good books to add to our stacks 🙂 Hope you are well, Jill!

Hey Christine! So great to hear from you and your sweet reading household! I am well and wish the same to you and your dear ones 🙂

[…] Clubhouse Mysteries: The Buried Bones Mystery Daisy Dawson on the Farm Georgie Lee Lulu and the Dog from the Sea Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea […]

[…] can find my earlier two installments of 100-page-and-under lists here and here. You can also browse my First Chapter Books list which has some titles not on the other […]

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The best short books and novellas under 250 pages

From classic to contemporary, discover our favourite short books and novellas, guaranteed to stay with you long after the final page..

As rewarding as tackling an immersive epic can be, sometimes short novels that can be finished in a weekend linger with us the longest. So, we've curated our edit of the best short books and novellas. Each is under 250 pages, and while much easier to finish in our busy lives than a 600+ page tome, these short novels are still guaranteed to make a lasting impact.

If you're looking for even more inspiration for you TBR pile, discover our edit of the best literary fiction.  

The best short novels

Western lane, by chetna maroo.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Exploring themes of grief and sisterhood, this debut coming-of-age story packs a lot of emotion into just 176 pages. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash for as long as she can remember. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a brutal training regimen. Soon, the game has become her entire world, causing a rift between Gopi and her sisters. But on the court, governed by the rhythms of the sport, she feels alive. This novel beautifully captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty as we follow a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself. 

Stella Maris

By cormac mccarthy.

Stella Maris is the story of a mathematician, twenty years old, admitted to the hospital with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag and one request: she does not want to talk about her brother. Heralded by the Guardian as ‘one of the greatest American novels of this or any other time’, Stella Maris is the must-read companion novel to The Passenger . Though they can be read separately, together, the two novels tell one grand story of siblings Bobby and Alicia Western. While The Passenger is a little longer, Stella Maris comes in at just 192 pages, making it the perfect short read to curl up with. 

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

By toshikazu kawaguchi.

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. But this opportunity is not without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . . Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful novel stole the hearts of readers the world over. Through it, we meet four visitors to the café and explore the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

Five Tuesdays in Winter

By lily king.

With Writers & Lovers , Lily King became one of our most acclaimed writers of contemporary fiction. And now, with Five Tuesdays in Winter , she gathers ten of her best short stories. These intimate literary stories tell of a bookseller who is filled with unspoken love for his employee, an abandoned teenage boy nurtured by a pair of housesitting students and a girl whose loss of innocence brings confident power. Romantic, hopeful, raw and occasionally surreal, these stories riff beautifully on the topic of love and romance.

by Raven Leilani

Raven Leilani is a funny and original new voice in literary fiction. Her razor-sharp yet surprisingly tender debut is an essential novel about what it means to be young now. Edie is messing up her life, and no one seems to care. Then she meets Eric, who is white, middle-aged and comes with a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. And as if life wasn’t hard enough, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s family. 

The Most Precious of Cargoes

By jean-claude grumberg.

On a train crossing the forest, a Jewish father holds his twin children. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed them. In hopes of saving both their lives, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and gently throws her from the train. Elsewhere in the enormous forest lives a young woman, who prays each night for a baby until one day, she finds a small bundle. Set against the horrors of the Holocaust and told with a fairytale-like lyricism,  The Most Precious of Cargoes , is a deeply moving fable about family and redemption that is simply not to be missed.

All the Lovers in the Night

By mieko kawakami.

Freelancer proofreader Fuyuko is shy and solitary. About to turn thirty-five, she is haunted by her past encounters, and is unable to even imagine a successful relationship. But she has one friend, Hijiri, and she loves the light. On Christmas Eve, the night of her birthday, Fuyuko leaves her home to count the lights, and an encounter with physics teacher Mr. Mitsutsuka opens up another dimension. Poetic, pulsing and unexpected, this is the third novel by internationally bestselling writer Mieko Kawakami.

‘ Compact and supple, it’s a strikingly intelligent feat. ’ The New York Times on All the Lovers in the NIght

Of Women and Salt

By gabriela garcia.

A New York Times bestseller, Of Women and Salt tells the story of five generations of fierce Latina women, linked by blood and circumstance. From nineteenth-century cigar factories to present-day detention centres, this novel is a haunting meditation on the choices of mothers and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their truth despite those who wish to silence them. 

The Cat Who Saved Books

By sosuke natsukawa.

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai

This international bestseller is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others, and the tremendous power of books (even short ones). After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated. It seems he will have to close Natsuki Books, the tiny second-hand bookshop his grandfather owned which has long been Rintaro's safe haven. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. Together, they embark on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. 

Summerwater

By sarah moss.

This devastating novel from the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall is set over twenty-four hours as the guests of a faded Scottish cabin park wait out the rain on the longest day of the year. With little else to do, twelve people sit cooped up with their families, watching the other residents. Slowly, one family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, begin to draw attention and tensions begin to rise as tragedy looms.  Summerwater  is a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty and a literary must-read in these divided times.

by Thora Hjörleifsdóttir Translated by Meg Matich

Twenty-year-old Lilja is in love. He is older and beautiful, a Derrida-quoting intellectual. He is also a serial cheater, gaslighter and narcissist. Lilja will do anything to hold on to him. And so she accepts his deceptions and endures his sexual desires. She rationalizes his toxic behaviour and permits him to cross all her boundaries. In her desperation to be the perfect lover, she finds herself unable to break free from the toxic cycle. And then an unexpected ultimatum: an all-consuming love, or the promise of a life reclaimed.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales From the Cafe

This short book is another beautiful, simple tale about the time-travelling customers of the Cafe Funiculi Funicula and the sequel to the bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold . Customers include a man who travels to see the girl he couldn’t marry, a son who had to miss his mother’s funeral and a man who travels back to see his friend who died twenty-two years ago. This beautiful, simple tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives.

The Silence

By don delillo.

This novella from one of America’s greatest literary fiction writers, Don DeLillo, is an illuminating and essential guide to our navigation of a bewildering world. Set on Super Bowl Sunday 2022, this compelling novel about what happens when an unpredictable crisis strikes is a profoundly moving examination of what makes us human. A retired physics professor and her husband are hosting a dinner party. One of her former students has already arrived, but another couple has been delayed by a dramatic flight from Paris. As they wait for kick-off, something happens that severs the digital connections in all our lives.

Don't Miss

A complete guide to Don DeLilo's books

The girl who reads on the métro, by christine féret-fleury.

Juliette takes the métro to the job she hates each morning, her only escape the books she reads on her journey. But one day she gets off a few stops early, and meetds Soliman – the owner of the most enchanting bookshop Juliette has ever seen. And this encounter will change her life forever, because Soliman also believes in the power of books, and he has the perfect job for Juliette . . .  

The End We Start From

By megan hunter.

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds. 

The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories

By charlotte perkins gilman.

Confined to her attic bedroom and isolated from her newborn baby, the nameless narrator of  The Yellow Wallpaper  keeps a diary in which she records the shifting patterns of the room’s lurid yellow wallpaper. In  Herland , a trio of men set out to discover an all-female community rumoured to be hidden deep in the jungle. There, they’re captured by women who have lived in a peaceful and prosperous utopia without men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s progressive views on feminism and mental health are showcased in her two most famous stories. With both stories totalling just 240 pages, this MCL edition is a perfect short read.

Our Souls at Night

Adapted into a major film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, Our Souls at Night is the final novel from the acclaimed American author, Kent Haruf. Addie Moore and Louis Waters have been neighbours for years. Now they both live alone, their houses empty of family, their quiet nights solitary. Then one evening Addie pays Louis a visit, and their lives change forever. This short, romantic novel is a story about growing old with grace and bravery.

‘ Simple, low-key and absolutely beautiful. ’ The Times on Our Souls at Night

The Little Prince

By antoine de saint-exupéry.

First published in 1943,  The Little Prince  by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been translated into more than 250 languages, becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's short novel tells the story of a pilot stranded in the Sahara and his strange encounter with a young boy from another world, whose curiosity takes them on their journey together. Soon the pilot is able to piece together an understanding of the tiny planet from which the prince has come and of his incredible travels across the universe.

The Great Gatsby

By f. scott fitzgerald.

A book that surely needs little introduction, this is one of Fitzgerald’s greatest works, capturing the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age. Jay Gatsby lives mysteriously in a Long Island mansion, and while people clamour for invitations to his lavish parties, no one seems to know him or how he became so rich. But Jay Gatsby cares for one person alone - Daisy Buchanan, the woman he has waited for all his life. Little does he know that his infatuation will lead to tragedy and end in murder.

by Toni Morrison

First published in 1973, Toni Morrison's Sula is an essential book in the formation of black feminist literary criticism, tackling themes of womanhood, race, slavery and love. Having grown up together in a poor but close-knit community, Nel and Sula are inseparable, until adulthood takes them on different paths. Nel stays in town to raise a family, but Sula escapes to the progressive ideals of the big city. When Sula returns ten years later, the two friends must confront their differences and an awful secret they shared as children. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

By douglas adams.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began life as a Radio 4 show in 1978 and has since spawned adaptations across almost every format, making it a staple on every respectable list of the best sci-fi books. Following the galactic adventures of Arthur Dent after his house's untimely demolition to make way for a new hyperspace express route, this new edition of 'the Guide' features exclusive bonus archive material and a new introduction from Russell T. Davies.

Our Wives Under The Sea

By julia armfield.

Leah is back from a perilous and troubling deep-sea mission, and Miri is delighted to have her wife home. To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normality, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Leah has carried the trauma of events that took place on the ocean floor into the couple's domestic life, and Miri soon realizes that the life that they once knew, might be gone. The debut novel from the author of acclaimed short story collection salt slow , Our Wives Under The Sea is a rich meditation on love, loss and the mysteries of the ocean.

Very Cold People

No one is watching Ruth, but she watches everyone and everything. Growing up on the outskirts of a wealthy but threadbare town, on the outer edge of popularity, she doesn’t necessarily understand what she is seeing, but she records the unfurling of her awkward youth, under even more awkward parenting. As they mock, ignore, undermine and discount their daughter, Ruth’s parents present now as damaged, inadequate, even monstrous. All the while the Future comes towards them, steadily, and for some of them, fatally. And the fog of the Past and the abuses committed under it gathers, swirls, settles, and intermittently clears. A short but dazzling book that will immobilize and transfix you.

Concerning My Daughter

By kim hye-jin.

In this prize-winning, internationally bestselling short novel, a mother lets her thirty-something daughter – Green – move into her apartment, with dreams that she will find a good job and a good husband to start a family with. But when Green arrives with her girlfriend Lane, her mother finds it hard to be civil. Yet Green's mother has her own moral battle to fight when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who chose not to lead a conventional life, and she finds herself asking the question: why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all? Translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, this is a universal tale about ageing, prejudice and love.

Acts of Infidelity

By lena andersson.

Actor Olof Sten makes no secret of being married, but when meets Ester Nilsson, she falls madly in love with him. As they start to meet regularly and begin to conduct a strange dance of courtship, Olof insists he doesn't plan to leave his wife, but he doesn't object to this new situation either . . . it’s far too much fun. Ester, on the other hand, is convinced that things might change. To read  Acts of Infidelity  is to dive inside the mind of a brilliant, infuriating friend. Cutting, often cruel, and written with razor-sharp humour, Acts of Infidelity is painful, maddening, but most of all perfectly, precisely true.

Mrs Dalloway

By virginia woolf.

On a perfect June morning, Clarissa Dalloway sets off to buy flowers for the party she will host that evening. She is preoccupied with thoughts of the present and memories of the past, and from her interior monologue emerge the people who have touched her life. On the same day, Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked survivor of the Great War, commits suicide, and casual mention of his death at the party provokes in Clarissa thoughts of her own isolation. Bold and experimental, Virginia Woolf's story of one day in the lives of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith is a landmark in twentieth-century fiction. 

The best short non-fiction books

A (very) short history of life on earth, by henry gee.

This lyrical and moving account takes us back to the early history of the earth, a wildly inhospitable place with swirling seas, constant volcanic eruptions and an unstable atmosphere. The triumph of life as it emerges, survives and evolves in this hostile setting is Henry Gee's riveting subject: he traces the story of life on earth from its turbulent beginnings to the emergence of early hominids and the miracle of the first creatures to fly. You'll never look at our planet in the same way again.

Scary Smart

By mo gawdat.

In Scary Smart,  The former chief business officer of Google outlines how artificial intelligence is predicted to be a billion times more intelligent than humans by 2049. Free from distractions and working at incredible speeds, AI can look into the future and make informed predictions, looking around corners both real and virtual. But AI also gets so much wrong. Mo Gawdat, drawing on his unparalleled expertise in the field, outlines how and why we must alter the terrifying trajectory of AI development and teach ourselves and our machines to live better. 

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

By lisa feldman barrett.

In seven short essays about that big grey blob between your ears, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explores the origins and structure of the brain, as well as shelving popular myths about the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or between nature and nurture. Sure to intrigue casual readers and scientific veterans alike, the book is full of surprises, humour and revelations about human nature.

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

By mary seacole.

Mary Seacole was a fiercely independent self-funded entrepreneur from Jamaica. A trained nurse, she was desperate to offer help during the Crimean War, but was denied work by officials and by Florence Nightingale. Mary knew what she wanted to achieve and wouldn’t let anything stand in her way, so she set up her famous hotel for British soldiers, offering respite from the front line. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands is her gutsy autobiography.

The Happiest Man on Earth

By eddie jaku.

This heartbreaking yet hopeful memoir shows us how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times. In November 1938, Eddie Jaku was beaten, arrested and taken to a German concentration camp. He endured unimaginable horrors for the next seven years and lost family, friends and his country.  But he survived. And because he survived, he vowed to smile every day. He went on to believe himself to be the ‘happiest man on earth’. This is his story. 

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20 Extraordinary Books You Can Read in One Sitting

From the blisteringly contemporary to the classic, the lighthearted to the weighty, here are our favorite short novels to get lost in.

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The one-sitting novel isn’t just something you can read in one afternoon—it’s something you should read in one afternoon. The one-sitting novel is perfectly structured to be consumed as a complete, transporting experience, whether that’s a breakneck ride through a thrilling narrative, or a slow, dreamy fog that envelops your mind as you page through. The best one-sitting novels sweep you off your feet, whisking you away to another world, only to deposit you back on your doorstep a few hours later, dazed and changed, seared in the fire of something new.

For the sake of argument, we capped our choices at 250 pages—just enough to deliver a truly immersive experience, but not so many pages as to bleed over into the next day of reading. From the blisteringly contemporary to the classic, the lighthearted to the weighty, here are our favorite one-sitting novels. Go ahead—get lost in them.

The Employees, by Olga Ravn

Transporting and ephemeral, The Employees accomplishes more in 136 pages than some novels do in 500. On a ship hurtling through deep space, humans and humanoids work together under a rigid hierarchy, pitted against one another by a nameless corporation. On a planet called New Discovery, crew members retrieve mysterious objects that exert a strange power over man and machine alike, awakening dreams, memories, and longing. Humans mourn their lost connections on Earth, thousands of light years away, while their humanoid colleagues yearn for connections they’ve never known. Constructed as a series of witness statements from the crew, gathered after tensions with their oppressive employer boil over, The Employees is an unforgettable novel about the psychic costs of labor under capitalism. Yet it also reaches deeper to explore science fiction's animating questions: What makes us human?; Which of us is more human, person or robot?; Is a synthetic life still a life? Dreamlike and sensual, The Employee s shouldn't be missed.

Picador Luster, by Raven Leilani

Raw, racy, and utterly mesmerizing, Luster is a short bildungsroman to get lost in. Twenty-something Edie is drifting ever closer to self-destruction; after losing her dead-end admin job in a publishing office rife with racism and misogyny, she turns to delivering takeout by bike in order to make the rent on her squalid Bushwick apartment, where she spends her nights growing in fits and starts in her development as a painter. Meanwhile, she’s sleeping with a much-older man in an open marriage, whose carefully constructed boundaries come crashing down when his enigmatic wife invites a destitute Edie to stay in their suburban home. There Edie meets Akila, the couple’s recently adopted Black daughter, to whom Edie grows close when she realizes that she may be the only Black woman in this young teenager’s life. Leilani brings painterly precision and biting humor to a feverish novel where each pyrotechnic sentence is a joy to experience. Give yourself over to its dreamlike miasma.

Riverhead Books No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood

Never has the experience of being Extremely Online been more viscerally rendered than in No One Is Talking About This , Lockwood’s astonishing novel about a viral celebrity who travels the world on the back of her popular tweets. It takes a family tragedy to reawaken her to the world beyond her screen, where she’s reminded that the internet can’t contain the wonders and horrors of real life. Written in a style at once lyrical and fragmentary, brimming with memes and texts, this novel locates both the profane and the profound in how we live online. No One Is Talking About This will frighten you, implicate you, and scrape your guts out, in the best way possible.

Read a profile of Lockwood here at Esquire.

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster Infinite Country, by Patricia Engel

Beginning unforgettably with a young girl’s high-octane escape from a Catholic reform school, Engel’s short but sweeping novel gives voice to three generations of a Colombian family torn apart by man-made borders. When Elena and Mauro move their children to the United States, the cruelty of deportation sunders their family, but never their bonds. Gorgeously woven through with Andean myths and the bitter realities of undocumented life, Infinite Country tells a breathtaking story of the unimaginable prices paid for a better life, all in 208 compact pages.

Nightbitch , by Rachel Yoder

In this unforgettable debut novel, Yoder delivers an outrageous Kafka-esque parable about the mundanity and monstrosity of early motherhood. Our protagonist, an artist turned stay-at-home parent known only as “the mother," has become a husk of herself after two years of raising a toddler without the support of her husband, who's all-too often away on weekly business trips. Soon, her mind and body begin to change; she grows dense patches of hair, her teeth sharpen, and she develops canine impulses. It’s only through her surreal transformation into "Nightbitch" that she experiences liberation from the pressure cooker of motherhood. Yoder touches on a kaleidoscope of themes, from the towering inferno of female rage to the loss of self that accompanies motherhood, all of it undergirded by feral, ferocious scenes of our heroine feasting on rabbits and pissing on the lawn. Nightbitch will grab you by the scruff and refuse to let go.

Read an exclusive interview with Yoder here at Esquire .

Pizza Girl, by Jean Kyoung Frazier

In Frazier’s explosive debut novel , our nameless narrator is eighteen, pregnant, and feeling adrift as she stumbles through her days as a Los Angeles pizza delivery driver, all the while grieving the death of her alcoholic father and avoiding the smothering ministrations of her loving mother and boyfriend. Everything changes when she delivers a peculiar order to a suburban housewife, who becomes the locus of a psychosexual obsession with dangerous consequences. In just 193 wry, propulsive pages, Pizza Girl hurtles through the dark waters of obsession and addiction, as our dysfunctional Pizza Girl downs Miller Lites while studiously avoiding any semblance of forward motion. Yet at the same time, the novel bristles with biting wit and optimism, each page a feast of Cheeto-fingered heart, humor, and lyricism.

Jesus' Son, by Denis Johnson

From an American master comes a landmark book that launched decades of pale imitations: Jesus’ Son , a glittering stick of dynamite thrown into the literary firmament. In this short, luminous novel, we pal around with a man known only as Fuckhead, a sometimes-homeless, sometimes-underemployed drug addict stumbling down the path to redemption in the company of fellow lost souls. Exultant in tone, studded with dazzling moments of transcendent beauty, Jesus’ Son is an unforgettable novel—one you’ll spend your whole life wishing you could read for the first time all over again.

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

One of our most empathetic writers turns her full-hearted eye on an intergenerational Brooklyn story of two families from different social classes who are bound forever by a teenage pregnancy. Lyrical, dreamy, and brimming with compassion for her characters, Woodson explores the forces that divide us and the ties that bind with her signature extremity of feeling. Let the novel wash over you in a glorious one-day miasma.

Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer

In this spectacular climate novel, VanderMeer sets his sights on Area X, a lush and remote landscape that has turned against humankind, producing brain-bending effects on scientists who venture into the territory to investigate. As the secrets of Area X reveal themselves to the scientists, ecological and psychological consequences pile upward. Dreadful, Lovecraftian, and downright existential, this novel is a dizzying descent into a metaphysical wilderness leagues away from our lived reality. If you let VanderMeer pull you in for one whirlwind afternoon, expect to emerge dazed and changed.

Weather, by Jenny Offill

Compact and wholly contemporary, Jenny Offill’s third novel sees a librarian find deep meaning and deep despair in her side gig as an armchair therapist for those in existential crisis, including liberals fearing climate apocalypse and conservatives fearing the demise of ‘American values.’ As she attempts to save everyone, our protagonist is driven to her limits, making for a canny, comic story about the power of human need. Offill has a kinetic mind—one that hops, skips, and free associates through troves of information. It shows on the page, with Weather hewn from abundant white space into crisp paragraphs, each one functioning as a gemlike koan. Surrender an afternoon to the singular experience of marinating in Offill’s mind—you won’t regret it.

Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li

In this short, singular novel, centered on a grieving mother and the teenage son she lost to suicide, Li transports us to a liminal place beyond space and time, where mother and son can speak freely. In that boundless void, their imagined conversation is far-ranging and free-flowing, touching everything from the limits of language to the profound discontents that drove the son to suicide. In one poignant scene about language’s refusal to capture grief, Li writes, "Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable." Written in one furious draft after Li’s own teenage son died of suicide, Where Reasons End reaches that unspeakable place, at once a devastating read and an awe-inspiring glimpse into the inimitable mind of a peerless writer.

Written on the Body, by Jeannette Winterson

Keats longed for a brighter word than bright ; Written on the Body calls for a more luscious word than lush . This revelatory crossbreed of prose poem, erotic ode, and philosophical text unspools like silk, offering surprises at every turn. What begins as the story of an affair—the gender-ambiguous narrator falls for a dying married woman—hurtles into an arousing dreamscape of exaltation and loss. Sensual and erotic, it's best consumed in one fevered read.

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon

The shortest novel ever written by the legendarily long-winded Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 is a turbulent ride through the misadventures of California housewife Oedipa Maas, who finds her run-of-the-mill life upended when she is named the executor of a staggeringly wealthy former lover’s estate. Dogged by a cast of bizarre characters, Oedipa is thrust into a web of conspiracy and confusion, featuring mysterious symbols, the United States Postal Service, and no shortage of LSD. Read The Crying of Lot 49 in one sitting, and if you feel hopelessly disoriented, don’t fret—that’s exactly what Pynchon wants.

Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson

In this stunning novel in verse, mythology and reality collide in the volcanic story of Geryon, a winged red monster killed by Herakles in Greek legend, but reimagined in Carson’s telling as a tormented teenage monster smitten by Herakles the drifter, who becomes the subject of his photography before leaving without a backward look. Years later, Herakles and Geryon collide again, forcing Geryon to confront the pain of their parting and the return of his muse. At once a poignant exploration of love, loss, and loneliness, so too is this novel an ode to the long and winding journey of an artist’s becoming. Strange and sexy, with glimmeringly sharp edges, Autobiography of Red is a singular reading experience that could only come from a mind as singular as Carson’s.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

Cisneros’ inimitable coming-of-age classic has sold over six million copies, been translated into over twenty languages, and is taught in high school classrooms around the globe—with good reason. In just 103 luminous pages, Cisneros unspools a year in the life of 12-year-old Esperanza Cordero, a big-dreaming Chicana girl growing up in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood. Told in luscious vignettes, Esperanza’s journey as a fledgling writer stares head-on into the darknesses of racism, patriarchy, and domestic violence, yet The House on Mango Street is also a poignant testament to the enduring power of place in shaping our becoming.

Ghost Wall, by Sarah Moss

In this mythic and eerie novel, Moss transports us to rural Britain, where teenage Silvie and her family embark on a two-week archaeological project to live as their Iron Age ancestors did, with only rudimentary tools and limited knowledge. Silvie’s father, a disgruntled bus driver, has for years forced his family into cultural isolation through his obsession with the Iron Age way of life. Ancient Britons built “ghost walls” out of stakes topped with skulls to ward off invaders, but when Silvie and her group build their own ghost wall, they form a spiritual connection to the past, which soon takes a disturbing turn. In just 152 sharp, chilling pages, Moss delivers a stunning allegory about contemporary isolationism, criticizing the consequences that come with longing for “the good old days.”

Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata

Slim, hilarious, and spectacularly strange, Convenience Store Woman is the story of Keiko, a thirty-something misfit who has found purpose and joy in managing a Tokyo convenience store for almost two decades. Smart but socially awkward, Keiko is subjected to derision from her loved ones, who pressure her to find a husband and a “real” job as she approaches forty. Yet as Keiko considers knuckling under to their demands, the consequences of forgoing her true self spiral upward, making for a funny, heartfelt story about the triumph of individualism over conformity.

Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

“There is always another side, always,” writes Jean Rhys in her chilling, dreamlike prequel to Jane Eyre , where she inhabits another side to Charlotte Bronte’s madwoman in the attic. Years before Jane Eyre , we meet Antoinette Cosway, a sensual but sheltered European heiress raised at the isolating intersection of European and Jamaican culture. When Antoinette is sold into marriage to Edward Rochester, the second son of a wealthy family looking to further enrich himself through her inherited fortune, she is soon driven to despair through Rochester's restrictive cruelties. At just 176 pages of gorgeous imagery and turbulent emotions, Wide Sargasso Sea rolls over you like a hazy island fever dream, diving deep into how years of degradation can drive a woman to the brink.

Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin

In this short, seminal novel by the great James Baldwin, David, an American expat living in Paris circa the 1950s, wrestles with his identity and his sexuality as his lover awaits the guillotine. In a heartbreaking study of character, Baldwin lays bare David’s denial and self-deception, illuminating how his inability to live authentically bears fatal consequences for the alluring and vulnerable Giovanni. Before the novel was published in 1956, Baldwin’s publisher encouraged him to burn the draft, fearing that he would alienate his readership with a story of gay love. Today, Giovanni’s Room is widely recognized as one of the best LGBTQ+ novels of all time—a one-sitting must-read for anyone seeking to understand the pain and power of love under threat.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, by Lorrie Moore

From one of our finest writers of contemporary fiction comes a slim, sensational novel about two teenage girls working through the summer at an upstate amusement park: Berie, a shy ticket-taker, and Sils, her magnetic best friend, who dresses up as Cinderella to entertain children. The girls play at adulthood, swigging liquor from Mason jars and sneaking into taverns with fake IDs, until Sils is faced with a very adult problem, which drives the formerly inseparable duo apart. When Berie looks back on that fateful summer decades later, perceived through the weathered lens of middle-aged disappointment and ennui, the story becomes all the more sublime. Written with Moore’s trademark ear for humor, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? is a tender coming-of-age story about the bittersweetness of growing up and apart.

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The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Under 200 Pages

Or, 50 afternoons well spent.

About a month ago, we published a list of 50 of the best contemporary novels over 500 pages , for those of you who suddenly have a lot of extra time on your hands. But for those of us who suddenly have a lot less  extra time on our hands, or who just can’t really pay attention to anything anymore unless it’s a) short or b) what were we talking about? For us, I present this list of 50 of the best contemporary novels under 200 pages.

For our purposes here, “contemporary” means published (in English) after 1970. NB that I’m not making a distinction between novellas and novels—I’m not sure there really is one—but I’m not including short story collections, or books that include a novella and stories. Finally, as ever, “best” is subjective, and this list is limited by time and space and the literary tastes of this editor. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments below.

Mary Robison, Why Did I Ever (200 pages)

Probably the best fragment novel on the block: the saga of Money Breton, errant script doctor, mother of two, obsessive obssesser, is funny, irreverent, and weirdly moving. Not for nothing, but this novel is my own personal ultimate coolness test, because yep, I am an adult who judges other people’s coolness, and I do it based on the books they read.

Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation (177 pages)

My other candidate for the best recent fragment novel—not to mention one of the best novels of the decade , full stop—is of course Offill’s luminous, eye-wormy (this is a term I have just now invented for the literary version of ear-wormy, you’re welcome, and sorry), and consistently wise modern classic, which is ostensibly the story of a marriage but is more importantly the story of a mind.

Denis Johnson, Train Dreams (116 pages)

Johnson’s novella is a shibboleth among a certain kind of reader (and, typically, writer). In our list of the best novels of the decade , editor Dan Sheehan described it as “the incantatory story of a turn-of-the-century logger and railroad laborer, Robert Grainier, who loses his family to a wildfire and retreats deep into the woods of the Idaho panhandle as the country modernizes around him. Johnson’s spare, strange, elegiac prose conjures a world that feels both ancient and ephemeral, full of beauty and menace and deep sorrow. . . . An American epic in miniature,  Train Dreams is a visionary portrait of soul untethered from civilization, a man stoically persevering on his own hermetic terms in the face of unimaginable tragedy. A haunted and haunting reverie.”

Han Kang, tr. Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian (188 pages)

The Vegetarian has come under scrutiny for its translation, and the accuracy thereof, but since I can only read English, all I know is that whatever came out of the union of Kang and Smith is very, very good. In our list of the best debut novels of the decade, editor Molly Odintz wrote , “Han Kang’s tale begins with a description of a dutiful wife, unusual only in her refusal to wear a bra, whose sudden decision to stop eating meat sends her partner and family into a spiral of confusion, where forcible consumption of meat quickly becomes a metaphor for violation. The vegetarian begins a slow transformation into vegetable itself—first, she stops eating meat; gradually, she stops eating everything. Her withdrawal from culinary delights is mirrored by her withdrawal from the world. She basks in sunlight, is painted all over with flowers by her sister’s husband (a not-so-successful artist), and for all intents and purposes, attempts to become a plant. Is she onto something, or is she out of her mind? Is she denying the world, or is she fully embracing it? Han Kang leaves the answers to these questions deliberately vague, and the sign of a great work is its ability to be read by many people and interpreted differently by each one.”

Milan Kundera, Slowness (176 pages)

A metafictional meditation on modernity and memory—and on “the dancer,” showing off for the abstracted “everyone,” the concept of which gets more relevant every day.

Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills (192 pages)

Ishiguro’s debut, first published in 1982, takes shape through the recollections of an aging Japanese woman, living in England, now alone after her husband’s death. But as she reflects, the memories become less secure—or at least less restricted to the past. Like everything Ishiguro writes, it’s beautiful, subtle, and not a little shadowy.

Clarice Lispector, tr. Alison Entrekin, Near to the Wild Heart (194 pages)

I register that this is something of a cheat, since Lispector’s first novel was originally published in Brazil in 1943—but considering that it wasn’t translated into English until 1990, I’m going to sneak it in here. After all, it is too glorious to ignore: evidence of a mind on fire. We follow Joana through her life in this short novel, but it’s really the sentences you should read for: sometimes inscrutable, sometimes wild, sometimes transcendent.

Susanna Moore, In the Cut (179 pages)

Okay, I’m hereby warning you: this novel is not for the squeamish. My best friend recommended this book to me not too long ago and didn’t tell me anything about it except that it was amazing, and it was totally a replay of that time she made me go see Hard Candy  with her and told me it was going to be an indie comedy. And look, it is amazing, in the sense that you will have physical reactions reading this book, and in the sense that Moore perfectly captures a range of emotions and impulses rarely committed to paper. But like . . . you’re not going to feel good at the end. So just know that.

Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell, Fever Dream (189 pages)

This is a weird and terrifying, almost suffocating novel that kept me up for an entire night. In our list of the best debut novels of the decade , our editorial fellow Eleni Theodoropoulos wrote that in this novel, “detail is dramatized through dialogue, and Schweblin knows just what to pick and what to leave out so that characters and readers alike are obsessed with the story about the poison. Everyone is at the mercy of someone: David is at the mercy of Amanda, Amanda at the mercy of David, and the reader at the mercy of both of them. The only way to find out the truth in Fever Dream  is by trusting someone else’s narrative. Even in being swept away in the horrific progression of the novel, and simultaneously, the disease, the reader identifies with Amanda, a mother who realizes she cannot protect her child. In just under 200 pages, Schweblin has delivered a poignant, tragic tale of a fear come true.”

Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You (191 pages)

If you’ve been reading Lit Hub for any amount of time, you know how much we love Garth Greenwell’s debut (not to mention his latest,  Cleanness ), which is, after all, one of the best debut novels of the decade . It’s an exquisite book, both on the sentence and the story level, a mesmerizing work of art.

Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station (181 pages)

I still love Lerner’s debut, which is basically about a poet not writing poetry in Madrid, but is actually very good, despite that. In our list of the best debut novels of the decade, our editor Jessie Gaynor described it as one of the “most subtly hilarious novels around” and wrote that “Lerner invites the reader to laugh with his protagonist as well as with him. The novel feels propulsive rather than meandering, as if the reader is the one whose fellowship is quickly running short.”

Don DeLillo, Point Omega  (117 pages)

DeLillo’s the rare writer who excels in both the long and the short form. This one, his fifteenth, is a destabilizing, compelling portrait of grief refracted through art. According to me, at least—it’s also one of DeLillo’s most polarizing novels, so you might as well read it, at least to have an opinion on the matter.

Thomas Bernhard, tr. Jack Dawson, The Loser (190 pages)

Possibly the best ill-tempered 190 page monologue in contemporary literature, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First (160 pages)

This lucid gem is the first-person tale of Margaret Cavendish, a real-life 17th century Renaissance woman and writer whose story would be captivating enough on its own, even without Dutton’s elegant, winking treatment. But the winks do not go unnoticed, of course (nor does that gorgeous cover). In our list of the best novels of the decade , editor in chief Jonny Diamond described the book as a “glinting dagger of novel” and wrote that Dutton “realizes the outsize ambitions of this remarkable book with virtuosic efficiency, braiding first- and third-person perspectives with passages from Cavendish’s original writing. I will be recommending this book for the next decade.”

Leonard Michaels, Sylvia (123 pages)

Michaels’ autobiographical novel is a matter-of-fact retelling of his marriage to his first wife, the “abnormally bright” but depressed and volatile Sylvia Bloch. Reading it feels like looking, through Michaels’ clear eyes, at a moment in his life in his early 20s that has been hermetically sealed, so by the time he tells the story, it’s become a sort of still-water legend. You can discern pretty much right away that this relationship is doomed, but it still feels essential to watch it unfold.

Renata Adler,  Speedboat   (193 pages)

If you’re a certain kind of woman living in a certain kind of city, this is a bible. If you’re a certain kind of writer with a certain kind of sensibility, it’s a bible too. Adler’s wry, discursive novel is a brilliant portrait of New York and of a singular, elliptical mind—the kind of book that, if you’re a certain kind of person, will have you looking at everything around you a little bit more carefully and taking notes like mad.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (163 pages)

The winner of the 2001 Man Booker prize is a wonderful if melancholic novel about memory, aging, and what it is to live a good (or at least not a bad) life.

Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Susan Bernofsky, Visitation (150 pages)

This is another book that I feel like I carp on about all the time on this website, but I don’t actually feel too sorry about that. As I wrote in our list of the best translated novels of the decade , this is a book about a house on a lake outside of Berlin—a house that is as much the subject, as a place in time, as the people who move through it. “There are little human dramas within this grander and colder scheme, ones that secretly hook us in, however minor they seem, so that we are devastated when time passes, so that we mourn the ones we barely knew, for their fixations, their tragedies, their trying. Elegiac, often astoundingly gorgeous, sometimes strikingly brutal, this is one of the most wonderful novels of any sort that you could hope to read.”

Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman, Signs Preceding the End of the World (128 pages)

As I wrote in our list of the best translated novels of the decade , this book “is almost fable-like, both in length and tone: when you begin reading it, you’re not sure (or at least I wasn’t) whether you’re in our world or another—it begins with a sinkhole, a curse, and a quest. Soon it becomes clear that this  is  our world, or almost, sliced by the border between Mexico and the United States. Borders in this novel—between worlds, between words, between people—are both dangerous and porous, messages meaningless and profound in equal measure. It is an intense, indelible book, an instant myth of love and violence.”

Marguerite Duras, The Lover (117 pages)

I love this novel so much I once made a playlist for it . And I’m not the only one who is obsessed with this assured, severe book, which Duras originally planned as an annotated photo album of her youth. “Through the years, I have come to think of The Lover as a lake without a bottom, or perhaps more accurately with a bottom that is ever-shifting: each dive yields an altered and enriched understanding of the topography, and there is the sense that you could dive forever and never grasp that topography absolutely,” wrote Laura van den Berg . “In every reading, I have been stunned still by language that is at once crystalline and enigmatic: ‘The light fell from the sky in cataracts of pure transparency, in torrents of silence and immobility. The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue.'”

Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban (125 pages)

I think at this point, every single person on the Literary Hub staff has read Mrs. Caliban —the deceptively simple tale of a housewife who falls in love with a mysterious creature escaped and on the run from a government lab—after its reissue by New Directions during the Autumn of Sea Monsters , we just kept passing it around, one to the other. Our editor Dan Sheehan, who interviewed Ingalls before her death, described it as “an intoxicating mix of sensuality, sorrow, and supernatural horror, and a damn-near perfect novella.”

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (101 pages)

The forever classic of a girl growing up in Chicago.

Sayaka Murata, tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori,  Convenience Store Woman   (176 pages)

A dry, funny novel about, well, a woman who works in a convenience store. In our list of the best translated novels of the decade , editor Jessie Gaynor writes that “it reads, by turns, like a love story (woman meets store), an unusually charming employee handbook, and a psychological thriller—but somehow, it never feels disjointed. It was interesting to read this novel in the midst of a glut of English books about the dehumanizing nature of underemployment.  Convenience Store Woman  doesn’t, in my reading, take a stance on the Value of Work. Instead, it presents Keiko in all her glorious strangeness, and invites the reader to delight in it.”

Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind (197 pages)

A harrowing work of genius—and for the uninitiated, consider this the entry point for many, many hours of literary enjoyment.

Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red (149 pages)

Carson’s novel in verse, a retelling of a classic Greek myth, is one of those books that retrains your mind, erasing all the rules about what novels should—or even can—be. Ocean Vuong lists it among the books he needed to write his celebrated debut  On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous , writing “perhaps what’s most inspiring to me about this book is Carson’s refusal to enact her protagonist’s development via a false and forced inhabitation of heteronormative ideals. Geyron, a quiet, small, artistic mama’s boy, does not become a masculinist hero in order to “solve” his outcast position. Instead, he bravely embodies his otherness, or “monstrosity,” as Carson writes, through emotionally-informed aesthetic vision. It’s a book that insists on the necessity of alterity as agency instead of succumbing to the readily assimilative.”

Donald Antrim, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World (164 pages)

Antrim’s stucco-pink, subtropic suburban nightmare concerns a town gone mad and the schoolteacher determined to get everything back to normal—albeit with highly suspect methods. This surreal mini-masterpiece is one of my favorite novels of all time, and one of the funniest, in the darkest possible way.

Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Tim Parks, Sweet Days of Discipline (101 pages)

An actually perfect novel, which elsewhere I ranked as the fourth best campus novel of all time (give me a book, I’ve ranked it somewhere). It’s set in a boarding school in the Appenzell; when disdainful, mysterious new girl Frédérique, our narrator is enthralled—and determined “to conquer her.” Everly line is ice cold in its deliberation, and yet the whole thing feels hot. Which is not even to mention the incredible new cover designed by Oliver Munday, who I daresay agrees with me about the merits of the book .

Sara Levine, Treasure Island!!! (172 pages)

A truly insane novel about a young woman who decides to live her life by the principles of Robert Louis Stevenson’s  Treasure Island , those principles being Boldness, Resolution, Independence, and, of course, Horn Blowing. One of the most fun reading experiences I can remember.

César Aira, tr. Chris Andrews, Ghosts (141 pages)

Many of Aira’s books could be candidates for this list—Ghosts is a personal favorite: a builder’s family squats in an unfinished apartment building, also populated, for those who can see them, by ghosts. That said, Mark Haber also makes a very good argument for  Ema the Captive here . We can just call this the Aira spot.

Elena Ferrante, tr. Ann Goldstein, The Days of Abandonment (188 pages)

Psst. This is the  real  Ferrante. I mean, look, I love the Neapolitan series as much as everybody (well probably not as much as everybody but I admit they’re good), but in my opinion, this short novel about a woman unraveling is her true masterpiece.

Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (145 pages)

Baker’s hilarious, cerebral debut takes place over the length of a single escalator ride, but turns out that a single escalator ride can actually contain multitudes. It is about as packed as a book can be with witty observations, cultural criticism, and human behavior. And milk cartons. (Sorry, but this is one of those books you can’t explain to people, you just have to trust me and give it a try.)

Andrés Barba, tr. Lisa Dillman,  Such Small Hands   (94 pages)

It is my solemn duty to proselytize this vicious little book—in which a girl is sent to an orphanage after her parents are killed in a car crash, and I can’t tell you anymore—everywhere I go. My latest victim was our editor Katie Yee, who wrote in our list of the best translated novels of the decade that the book “reads like logic breaking, like a melon dropping on the ground. It is the unexpected word choice (the seatbelt had become  severe !) that makes this work simultaneously sinister and a joy to read. . . . At only 94 pages,  Such Small Hands is a cruelly quick read that makes you feel, in the best way, like the walls of language are closing in on you.”

Susan Steinberg, Machine (149 pages)

Steinberg is an undersung genius, and her elliptical novel about one tragic summer—a girl, a drowning—should be a modern classic in the vein of Jenny Offill and Maggie Nelson.

Julie Otsuka,  The Buddha in the Attic (144 pages)

Otsuka elegantly employs the first person plural to tell the story of a group of Japanese “picture brides” who come  to California to meet their husbands. In our list of the best novels of the decade , our editor Katie Yee writes that “the collective first person narration matches the subject matter beautifully; it mimics the immigrant experience, the way “others” are often seen as the same and the automatic camaraderie and safety we might find among those who share our stories. . . . I’ve re-read this novel many times, trying to understand how it can encompass such a wide scope of things. What Julie Otsuka has accomplished here is both an artful, intimate portrait of individual lives and a piercing indictment of history.”

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters (180 pages)

Scraping through with a 1970 pub date, one of my all-time favorite novels about a woman who may or may not have rabies.

William Maxwell,  So Long, See You Tomorrow   (145 pages)

Though he’s better known for being the fiction editor of The New Yorker during its glory days, Maxwell also wrote short stories and several novels—the last of which, a slim autobiographical novel which won a National Book Award in 1982, was shortest and greatest.

Toni Morrison, Sula (192 pages)

Morrison’s  Sula  features one of the most enduring (and convincing) female friendships/rivalries ever committed to literature: that of Sula and Nel, living in “the Bottom” in Ohio. As Mira Jacob put it , “what I particularly love about  Sula is the full complexity of her female characters. It’s like reading those characters when I was younger was seeing, for the first time, who centered dark women. Who centered, who whole-heartedly said this story is hers, and hers, and hers, and they—we are allowed to be as complex as we need to be, and hold the ground in the story.  . . . This is the book that I keep by my bed because when things don’t make sense, I will turn to a single paragraph and just meditate on it. Because I feel like everything is very deftly placed, but even within that, I feel a sense of wonder in here. A real curiosity about people and how they work and what they’re willing to settle for and what they’re not willing to settle for, and the real friction of what that looks like.”

Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (160 pages)

A sly little historical fairy tale, in which a web-footed Venetian pickpocket named Villanelle has lost her heart (literally) to a noblewoman, and a stumbling soldier named Henri will try to get it back.

James Welch, Winter in the Blood (160 pages)

In Welch’s brutal, celebrated first novel, our unnamed narrator, a young man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana, seeks both connection—to his tribe, his history, his culture, his fractured family—and independent self-actualization. As Reynolds Price wrote in The New York Times Book Review , “the story it tells, the knowledge it contains, has as much to say of the bone‐deep disaffection and bafflement, the famous and apparently incurable psychic paralysis of several million Americans of varied origins now in their twenties, early thirties, as of any smaller group. Permafrost in the blood and mind—why and how and what to do?”

Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers (128 pages)

A lovely, surrealist novel, and one of the most convincing stories about grief I have ever read.

Valeria Luiselli, tr. Christina MacSweeney, Faces in the Crowd (162 pages)

Though she’s published a lot of wonderful work since then, I’m still partial to Luiselli’s debut novel, originally published in 2011 and translated into English in 2014, a fresh and compelling portrait of the artist as a young translator taken askance and doubled back on itself.

Tobias Wolff, Old School (195 pages)

An unnamed senior, an unnamed boarding school, a literary world so close you could almost offend it. As Michael Knight put it last year, this is the perfect campus novel (I ranked it twelfth on my list of the best ), both fulfilling and transcending the expectations of the genre. “Here we have the musty but beautiful buildings, the arcana of campus customs, the rivalries and ambitions of the students at his all-male academy, all rendered in Wolff’s spare and lucid prose. We even have a plagiarism case, hardly exotic to the genre. The novel is rich in familiar ways throughout, but it’s not until Wolff shifts point of view in the last section, away from first person and into third, away from student life to an English teacher burdened by a secret of his own, that the book lifts up and out of the boarding school tradition and into something altogether more devastating.”

Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (160 pages)

In Moore’s indelibly observed, sneakily devastating second novel, a discontented woman on a trip to Paris with her husband looks back at the summer she was 15, dragged along by her luminous friend Sils, when everything was still possible and exciting—but soon, like all things, to end.

Penelope Fitzgerald,  The Bookshop   (118 pages)

A perfect jewel of a novel about a woman who opens a bookstore in a small town in Suffolk, fights with a local bigwig, and ultimately (spoiler alert) gets evicted.

Stephen Graham Jones, Mapping the Interior (112 pages)

Jones is an extraordinarily prolific writer, and he’s an expert at genre manipulation; no surprise then that Mapping the Interior is both a coming-of-age story and a horror story, a book about menace, memory, and hope.

Ron Hansen,  Mariette in Ecstasy (192 pages)

Hansen’s gorgeous, precise little novel is set in a Roman Catholic convent in upstate New York in 1906. In The Times , Patricia Hampl called it “a novel whose language is so exquisite that the book runs the danger of being praised only for its diamondlike prose, which is often as pleasing as the most crystalline poetry. And yet Mariette in Ecstasy  is not solely a novel of sensibility, a mere esthete’s exercise. For while its descriptions dazzle, they never preen or degenerate into overblown virtuoso riffs. The greatest beauty—and the fundamental success—of this gripping novel is that its author has managed to find a voice that is entirely at the service of its strange and elusive subject.”

Grace Krilanovich,  The Orange Eats Creeps   (172 pages)

I remember reading this novel when it came out in 2010, and gasping audibly at the audacity of its rule-breaking: this was a novel unlike any I had read before, and boy was it fun, and weird, and gross, and punk. I never hear people talking about it these days, but they should be: it’s a careening, side-elbowing nightmare of a book that you should definitely read if you liked Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream .

Justin Torres, We the Animals (125 pages)

Another skinny novel that made our list of the best debuts of the decade —a barbaric yawp of a book that celebrates and sings boyhood in all its grimy glory.

Marie Redonnet, tr. Jordan Stump, Hôtel Splendid (113 pages)

Allow me to use this space to recommend not just Hôtel Splendid , a weird and charming novel about three sisters maintaining a hotel that seems determined to sink back into the earth, but the whole of the loose trilogy of which it is a part, the other two books being  Forever Valley , in which a teenage girls digs holes looking for the dead, and Rose Mellie Rose , in which another young girl in a decaying landscape tries to outline her life.

Ottessa Moshfegh, McGlue (160 pages)

Moshfegh’s debut novella won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award, but it still seems like no one has read it—a shame, but understandable. Rather than explain, I’ll direct you to the opening of the review that made me want to pick it up, which goes like this : “Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel reads like the swashbuckled spray of a slit throat—immediate, visceral, frank, unforgiving, violent, and grotesquely beautiful. McGlue, a transient drunk with a crack in his head, beats (at times quite literally) against his own possibility with overconsumption, nihilism, self-destructiveness, and utter depravity.” You’re either into that kind of thing or you aren’t.

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The Times of India

10 most iconic books that are under 100 pages

Posted: 10 March 2024 | Last updated: 27 March 2024

​10 most iconic books that are under 100 pages

Short books to read

If you have reached a reading slump or are just not able to find the time for reading between your schedule, starting small might help! Here we list 10 iconic books that are under 100 pages in most of their prints and are perfect to restart your reading journey.

​‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu

This ancient Chinese military treatise offers timeless wisdom on strategy and tactics that can be applied and adhered to even today. Sun Tzu's insights into warfare have been applied not only to military affairs but also to business, politics, and everyday life.

​‘Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka

This novel by Kafka is the story of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Kafka's work explores the themes of alienation, identity, and the absurdity of human existence.

​‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad

Set in colonial Africa, Conrad’s story follows Charles Marlow as he travels up the Congo River in search of the ivory trader Kurtz. The book’s exploration of the darkness within the human soul and the bad side of imperialism continues to amaze readers even today.

​‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A children's book in the list, ‘The Prince’ is the story of a young prince who travels from planet to planet, learning valuable lessons about love, friendship, and the importance of seeing with the heart.

‘The Time Machine’ by H.G. Wells

A classic of its time, some editions of ‘The Time Machine’ are of a mere 92 pages. In this science fiction classic, we see a Time Traveller and two races of people - the Morlocks and the Elois.

​‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell

An absolute classic, ‘Animal Farm’ is part of not just readings but also syllabus in many courses and colleges. Orwell uses farm animals to represent various political figures and ideologies, offering a powerful critique of totalitarianism and the abuse of power.

​‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens

A timeless tale, ‘Christmas Carol’ follows the character Ebenezer Scrooge as he is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. Dickens' heartwarming story continues to be a holiday favorite.

‘As a Man Thinketh’ by James Allen

In this short essay, James Allen looks at and teaches people about the power of thoughts and their influence on one's life. He argues that by controlling one's thoughts, one can control their destiny and achieve success and happiness.

​‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ tells the story of Santiago who goes on an epic struggle to catch a giant marlin but eventually ends up losing it.

​‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck

Set during the Great Depression, this book follows the unlikely friendship between two migrant workers, George and Lennie, as they dream of owning a piece of land of their own. The major themes in the story are loneliness, friendship, and the American Dream.

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100 Must-Read Short YA Books Under 250 Pages

Kelly Jensen

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen .

View All posts by Kelly Jensen

Meet Libby. The one-tap reading app from your library, powered by OverDrive. Downloading Libby to your smartphone allows you to borrow thousands of eBooks and audiobooks for free anytime and anywhere. You’ll find library books in all genres, ranging from bestsellers, classics, nonfiction, comics and much more. Libby works on Apple and Android devices and is compatible with Kindle. All you need is a library card but you can sample any book in the library collection without one. In select locations, Libby will even get your library card for you instantly. Learn more at https://meet.libbyapp.com/. Happy Reading.

As the young adult book category has grown over the last couple of decades, so has the page count in those books. There is no question that part of that growth is due to the “ Harry Potter effect. ” But let’s be honest: sometimes what you really want to read is a short YA book or a pile of short YA books.

Short YA books pack a punch in few pages. Although they’re often stand-alone titles, there are a number of short YA books which are the start of a longer series (often, too, all on the shorter page count side). Not all short YA books are “easy” reads, though—some of these books can be exceptionally challenging, requiring more time to read than some of the longest books in YA .

What  are  short YA books? They’re books clocking in at 250 pages or fewer. There’s a little wiggle room here, accounting for different editions and formats of the titles having slightly different page counts.

Below you’ll find 100 must-read short YA books. These titles range from classic YA titles to more current books. Some of these books are perfect one-sitting reads, while others might demand more than one sitting to enjoy the complexity in their brevity. There is a range of formats, as well as fiction and nonfiction titles included.

Descriptions come from Amazon.

After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. Suddenly they’re keenly aware of things beyond their block in Queens, things that are happening in the world—like the shooting of Tupac Shakur—and in search of their Big Purpose in life. When—all too soon—D’s mom swoops in to reclaim her, and Tupac dies, they are left with a sense of how quickly things can change and how even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.

The Agony of Bun O’Keefe by Heather Smith

It’s Newfoundland, 1986. Fourteen-year-old Bun O’Keefe has lived a solitary life in an unsafe, unsanitary house. Her mother is a compulsive hoarder, and Bun has had little contact with the outside world. What she’s learned about life comes from the random books and old VHS tapes that she finds in the boxes and bags her mother brings home. Bun and her mother rarely talk, so when Bun’s mother tells Bun to leave one day, she does. Hitchhiking out of town, Bun ends up on the streets of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Fortunately, the first person she meets is Busker Boy, a street musician who senses her naivety and takes her in. Together they live in a house with an eclectic cast of characters: Chef, a hotel dishwasher with culinary dreams; Cher, a drag queen with a tragic past; Big Eyes, a Catholic school girl desperately trying to reinvent herself; and The Landlord, a man who Bun is told to avoid at all cost. Through her experiences with her new roommates, and their sometimes tragic revelations, Bun learns that the world extends beyond the walls of her mother’s house and discovers the joy of being part of a new family—a family of friends who care.

American Ace by Marilyn Nelson

Connor’s grandmother leaves his dad a letter when she dies, and the letter’s confession shakes their tight-knit Italian-American family: The man who raised Dad is not his birth father.

But the only clues to this birth father’s identity are a class ring and a pair of pilot’s wings. And so Connor takes it upon himself to investigate—a pursuit that becomes even more pressing when Dad is hospitalized after a stroke. What Connor discovers will lead him and his father to a new, richer understanding of race, identity, and each other.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese  tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he’s the only Chinese American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny’s life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable.

Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Angus: My mixed-breed cat, half domestic tabby, half Scottish wildcat. The size of a small Labrador, only mad.

Thongs: Stupid underwear. What’s the point of them, anyway? They just go up your bum, as far as I can tell.

Full-Frontal Snogging: Kissing with all the trimmings, lip to lip, open mouth, tongues…everything.

Her dad’s got the mentality of a Teletubby (only not so developed). Her cat, Angus, is trying to eat the poodle next door. And her best friend thinks she looks like an alien—just because she accidentally shaved off her eyebrows. Ergghhhlack. Still, add a little boy-stalking, teacher-baiting, and full-frontal snogging with a Sex God, and Georgia’s year just might turn out to be the most fabbitty fab fab ever!

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

From the moment Liza Winthrop meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she knows there is something special between them. But Liza never knew falling in love could be so wonderful…or so confusing.

Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris

Someone’s been a very bad zombie.

Kate Grable is horrified to find out that the football coach has given the team steroids. Worse yet, the steriods are having an unexpected effect, turning hot gridiron hunks into mindless flesh-eating zombies. No one is safe—not her cute crush Aaron, not her dorky brother, Jonah…not even Kate! She’s got to find an antidote—before her entire high school ends up eating each other. So Kate, her best girlfriend, Rocky, and Aaron stage a frantic battle to save their town…and stay hormonally human.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.

Black Box by Julie Schumacher

WHEN DORA, ELENA’S older sister, is diagnosed with depression and has to be admitted to the hospital, Elena can’t seem to make sense of their lives anymore. At school, the only people who acknowledge Elena are Dora’s friends and Jimmy Zenk—who failed at least one grade and wears blackevery day of the week. And at home, Elena’s parents keep arguing with each other. Elena will do anything to help her sister get better and get their lives back to normal—even when the responsibility becomes too much to bear.

Black Helicopters by Blythe Woolston

Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden—with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead—four-year-old Valley knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. But now, with Da unexpectedly gone and no home to return to, a teenage Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother must bring their message to the outside world—a not-so-smart place where little boys wear their names on their backpacks and young men don’t pat down strangers before offering a lift. Blythe Woolston infuses her white-knuckle narrative, set in a day-after-tomorrow Montana, with a dark, trenchant humor and a keen psychological eye. Alternating past-present vignettes in prose as tightly wound as the springs of a clock and as masterfully plotted as a game of chess, she ratchets up the pacing right to the final, explosive end.

Bluefish by Pat Schmatz

Travis is missing his old home in the country, and he’s missing his old hound, Rosco. Now there’s just the cramped place he shares with his well-meaning but alcoholic grandpa, a new school, and the dreaded routine of passing when he’s called on to read out loud. But that’s before Travis meets Mr. McQueen, who doesn’t take “pass” for an answer—a rare teacher whose savvy persistence has Travis slowly unlocking a book on the natural world. And it’s before Travis is noticed by Velveeta, a girl whose wry banter and colorful scarves belie some hard secrets of her own. With sympathy, humor, and disarming honesty, Pat Schmatz brings to life a cast of utterly believable characters—and captures the moments of trust and connection that make all the difference.

The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

Ruby Oliver is 15 and has a shrink. She knows it’s unusual, but give her a break—she’s had a rough 10 days. In the past 10 days she: lost her boyfriend (#13 on the list),

lost her best friend (Kim),

lost all her other friends (Nora, Cricket),

did something suspicious with a boy (#10),

did something advanced with a boy (#15),

had an argument with a boy (#14),

drank her first beer (someone handed it to her),

got caught by her mom (ag!),

had a panic attack (scary),

lost a lacrosse game (she’s the goalie),

failed a math test (she’ll make it up),

hurt Meghan’s feelings (even though they aren’t really friends),

became a social outcast (no one to sit with at lunch)

and had graffiti written about her in the girls’ bathroom (who knows what was in the boys’!?!).

But don’t worry—Ruby lives to tell the tale. And make more lists.

Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes

When Wesley Boone writes a poem for his high school English class, some of his classmates clamor to read their poems aloud too. Soon they’re having weekly poetry sessions and, one by one, the eighteen students are opening up and taking on the risky challenge of self-revelation. There’s Lupe Alvarin, desperate to have a baby so she will feel loved. Raynard Patterson, hiding a secret behind his silence. Porscha Johnson, needing an outlet for her anger after her mother OD’s. Through the poetry they share and narratives in which they reveal their most intimate thoughts about themselves and one another, their words and lives show what lies beneath the skin, behind the eyes, beyond the masquerade.

The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in—at home she’s the perfect daughter, at school she’s provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn’t feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can’t be removed. While trying to cope with this creepiness, she goes out with her brother—and he disappears. A mysterious bubble of light just swallows him up, and Scotch has no idea how to find him. Soon, the Chaos that has claimed her brother affects the city at large, until it seems like everyone is turning into crazy creatures. Scotch needs to get to the bottom of this supernatural situation ASAP before the Chaos consumes everything she’s ever known—and she knows that the black shadowy entity that’s begun trailing her every move is probably not going to help.

Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

He’s part Win, the lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy. The guy who shuts all his classmates out, no matter the cost.

He’s part Drew, the angry young boy with violent impulses that control him. The boy who spent a fateful, long-ago summer with his brother and teenage cousins, only to endure a secret so monstrous it led three children to do the unthinkable.

Over the course of one night, while stuck at a party deep in the New England woods, Andrew battles both the pain of his past and the isolation of his present.

Before the sun rises, he’ll either surrender his sanity to the wild darkness inside his mind or make peace with the most elemental of truths-that choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.

The Children and The Wolves by Adam Rapp

Three teenagers—a sharp, well-to-do girl named Bounce and two struggling boys named Wiggins and Orange—are holding a four-year-old girl hostage in Orange’s basement. The little girl answers to “the Frog” and seems content to play a video game about wolves all day long, a game that parallels the reality around her. As the stakes grow higher and the guilt and tension mount, Wiggins cracks and finally brings Frog to a trusted adult. Not for the faint of heart, Adam Rapp’s powerful, mesmerizing narrative ventures deep into psychological territory that few dare to visit.

The Compound by SA Bodeen

Eli and his family have lived in the underground Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone, and they’ve become accustomed to their new life. Accustomed, but not happy. No amount of luxury can stifle the dull routine of living in the same place, with only his two sisters, only his father and mother, doing the same thing day after day after day. As problems with their carefully planned existence threaten to destroy their sanctuary—and their sanity—Eli can’t help but wonder if he’d rather take his chances outside. Eli’s father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe—really?

The Contender by Robert Lipsyte

Alfred Brooks is scared. He’s a high school dropout and his grocery store job is leading nowhere. His best friend is sinking further and further into drug addiction. Some street kids are after him for something he didn’t even do. So Alfred begins going to Donatelli’s Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it’s the effort, not the win, that makes the man—that last desperate struggle to get back on your feet when you thought you were down for the count.

Cracked Up To Be by Courtney Summers

Perfect Parker Fadley isn’t so perfect anymore. She’s quit the cheerleading squad, she’s dumped her perfect boyfriend, and she’s failing school. Her parents are on a constant suicide watch and her counselors think she’s playing games…but what they don’t know, the real reason for this whole mess, isn’t something she can say out loud. It isn’t even something she can say to herself. A horrible thing has happened and it just might be her fault. If she can just remove herself from everybody—be totally alone—then everything will be okay…The problem is, nobody will let her.

Damselfly by Chandra Prasad

Their survival is in their own hands…

Samantha Mishra opens her eyes and discovers she’s alone and injured in the thick of a jungle. She has no idea where she is, or what happened to the plane taking her and the rest of the Drake Rosemont fencing team across the Pacific for a tournament. Once Sam connects with her best friend, Mel, and they find the others, they set up shelter and hope for rescue. But as the days pass, the teens realize they’re on their own, stranded on an island with a mysterious presence that taunts and threatens them. Soon Sam and her companions discover they need to survive more than the jungle…they need to survive each other.

Dead Is The New Black by Marlene Perez

Welcome to Nightshade, California—a small town full of secrets. It’s home to the pyschic Giordano sisters, who have a way of getting mixed up in mysteries. During their investigations, they run across everything from pom-pom-shaking vampires to shape-shifting boyfriends to a clue-spewing jukebox. With their psychic powers and some sisterly support, they can crack any case!

Teenage girls are being mysteriously attacked all over town, including at Nightshade High School, where Daisy Giordano is a junior. When Daisy discovers that a vampire may be the culprit, she can’t help but suspect head cheerleader Samantha Devereaux, who returned from summer break with a new “look.” Samantha appears a little…well, dead, and all the most popular kids at school are copying her style.

Is looking dead just another fashion trend for Samantha, or is there something more sinister going on? To find out, Daisy joins the cheerleading squad.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can’t escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates.

Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up— way  up, sparking the fury of a white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. Justyce and Manny are caught in the crosshairs. In the media fallout, it’s Justyce who is under attack.

Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan

Kit Gordy sees Blackwood Hall towering over black iron gates, and she can’t help thinking,  This place is evil . The imposing mansion sends a shiver of fear through her. But Kit settles into a routine, trying to ignore the rumors that the highly exclusive boarding school is haunted.

Then her classmates begin to show extraordinary and unknown talents. The strange dreams, the voices, the lost letters to family and friends, all become overshadowed by the magic around them. When Kit and her friends realize that Blackwood isn’t what it claims to be, it might be too late.

Edges by Lena Roy

Luke left his old life—his dead mother, his alcoholic father—behind in New York City when he came to Moab, Utah, eight months ago. Seventeen years old and technically a runaway, he found work and a new home at a youth hostel nestled in the red sandstone valley. Now, he has reinvented himself as a guy who lives for the present, and it seems to be working—particularly when it comes to his relationship with his beautiful co-worker, Tangerine.

Back in New York, 19-year-old Ava is struggling through her own transformation—from drunk to recovering alcoholic. How could she have gotten so out of control? Almost 60 days sober, she’s not sure she can keep it up. But someone she meets at an AA meeting changes her mind, and a strange coincidence—or is it more than that?—brings Ava west to Moab as well.

Living on the edge, caught between the pain of the past and the possibilities of the future, Luke and Ava both discover that in this mysterious world, hope sometimes comes from the most unlikely places.

Empress of the World by Sara Ryan

Nicola Lancaster is spending her summer at the Siegel Institute, a hothouse of smart, intense teenagers. She soon falls in with Katrina (Manic Computer Chick), Isaac (Nice-Guy-Despite-Himself), Kevin (Inarticulate Composer) . . . and Battle, a beautiful blond dancer. The two become friends–and then, startlingly, more than friends. What do you do when you think you’re attracted to guys, and then you meet a girl who steals your heart?

The Everafter by Amy Huntley

Madison Stanton doesn’t know where she is or how she got there. But she does know this—she is dead. And alone, in a vast, dark space. The only company she has in this place are luminescent objects that turn out to be all the things Maddy lost while she was alive. And soon she discovers that with these artifacts, she can reexperience—and sometimes even  change —moments from her life.

Her first kiss.

A trip to Disney World.

Her sister’s wedding.

A disastrous sleepover.

In reliving these moments, Maddy learns illuminating and sometimes frightening truths about her life—and death.

First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci

A startling, wonderful novel about the true meaning of being an alien in an equally alien world.

“We are specks. Pieces of dust in this universe. Big nothings.

“I know what I am.”

Mal lives on the fringes of high school. Angry. Misunderstood. Yet loving the world—or, at least, an idea of the world.

Then he meets Hooper. Who says he’s from another planet. And may be going home very soon.

Flowers in the Sky by Lynn Joseph

Fifteen-year-old Nina Perez is faced with a future she never expected. She must leave her Garden of Eden, her lush island home in Samana, Dominican Republic, when she’s sent by her mother to live with her brother, Darrio, in New York, to seek out a better life. As Nina searches for some glimpse of familiarity amid the urban and jarring world of Washington Heights, she learns to uncover her own strength and independence. She finds a way to grow, just like the orchids that blossom on her fire escape. And as she is confronted by ugly secrets about her brother’s business, she comes to understand the realities of life in this new place. But then she meets him—that tall, green-eyed boy—one that she can’t erase from her thoughts, who just might help her learn to see beauty in spite of tragedy.

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley

Corinna is a Folk Keeper. Her job is to keep the mysterious Folk who live beneath the ground at bay. But Corinna has a secret that even she doesn’t fully comprehend, until she agrees to serve as Folk Keeper at Marblehaugh Park, a wealthy family’s seaside manor. There her hidden powers burst into full force, and Corinna’s life changes forever…

Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri

When Cole’s mom dumps him in the mean streets of Philadelphia to live with the dad he’s never met, the last thing Cole expects to see is a horse, let alone a stable full of them. He may not know much about cowboys, but what he knows for sure is that cowboys aren’t black, and they don’t live in the inner city. But in his dad’s ’hood, horses are a way of life, and soon Cole’s days of skipping school and getting in trouble in Detroit have been replaced by shoveling muck and trying not to get stomped on. At first, all Cole can think about is how to ditch these ghetto cowboys and get home. But when the City threatens to shut down the stables—and take away the horse Cole has come to think of as his own—he knows that it’s time to step up and fight back. Inspired by the little-known urban riders of Philly and Brooklyn, this compelling tale of latter-day cowboy justice champions a world where your friends always have your back, especially when the chips are down.

The Girl Who Could Silence The Wind by Meg Medina

Sixteen-year-old Sonia Ocampo was born on the night of the worst storm Tres Montes had ever seen. And when the winds mercifully stopped, an unshakable belief in the girl’s protective powers began. All her life, Sonia has been asked to pray for sick mothers or missing sons, as worried parents and friends press silver milagros in her hands. Sonia knows she has no special powers, but how can she disappoint those who look to her for solace? Still, her conscience is heavy, so when she gets a chance to travel to the city and work in the home of a wealthy woman, she seizes it. At first, Sonia feels freedom in being treated like all the other girls. But when news arrives that her beloved brother has disappeared while looking for work, she learns to her sorrow that she can never truly leave the past or her family behind.

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

Quincy and Biddy are both graduates of their high school’s special ed program, but they couldn’t be more different: suspicious Quincy faces the world with her fists up, while gentle Biddy is frightened to step outside her front door. When they’re thrown together as roommates in their first “real world” apartment, it initially seems to be an uneasy fit. But as Biddy’s past resurfaces and Quincy faces a harrowing experience that no one should have to go through alone, the two of them realize that they might have more in common than they thought—and more important, that they might be able to help each other move forward.

Girl Stolen by April Henry

Sixteen year-old Cheyenne Wilder is sleeping in the back of a car while her mom fills her prescription at the pharmacy. Before Cheyenne realizes what’s happening, their car is being stolen—with her inside! Griffin hadn’t meant to kidnap Cheyenne, all he needed to do was steal a car for the others.

But once Griffin’s dad finds out that Cheyenne’s father is the president of a powerful corporation, everything changes—now there’s a reason to keep her. What Griffin doesn’t know is that Cheyenne is not only sick with pneumonia, she is blind. How will Cheyenne survive this nightmare, and if she does, at what price?

The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky

The Vietnam War rages overseas, but back at home, in a year that begins with the hanging of one man and ends with the drowning of another, eleven schoolgirls embrace their own chilling history when their teacher abruptly goes missing on a field trip. Who was the mysterious poet they had met in the Garden? What actually happened in the seaside cave that day? And most important—who can they tell about it? In beautifully shimmering prose, Ursula Dubosarsky reveals how a single shared experience can alter the course of young lives forever. Part gripping thriller, part ethereal tale of innocence lost,  The Golden Day  is a poignant study of fear and friendship, and of what it takes to come of age with courage.

Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz

It’s a year after 9/11. Sniper shootings throughout the D.C. area have everyone on edge and trying to make sense of these random acts of violence. Meanwhile, Craig and Lio are just trying to make sense of their lives.

Craig’s crushing on quiet, distant Lio, and preoccupied with what it meant when Lio kissed him…and if he’ll do it again…and if kissing Lio will help him finally get over his ex-boyfriend, Cody.

Lio feels most alive when he’s with Craig. He forgets about his broken family, his dead brother, and the messed up world. But being with Craig means being vulnerable…and Lio will have to decide whether love is worth the risk.

The Good Braider by Terry Farish

In spare free verse laced with unforgettable images, Viola’s strikingly original voice sings out the story of her family’s journey from war-torn Sudan, to Cairo, and finally to Portland, Maine. Here, in the sometimes too close embrace of the local Southern Sudanese Community, she dreams of South Sudan while she tries to navigate the strange world of America—a world where a girl can wear a short skirt, get a tattoo, or even date a boy; a world that puts her into sharp conflict with her traditional mother who, like Viola, is struggling to braid together the strands of a displaced life. Terry Farish’s haunting novel is not only a riveting story of escape and survival, but the universal tale of a young immigrant’s struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures.

Half World by Hiromi Goto

Melanie Tamaki is human but her parents aren’t. They are from Half World, a Limbo between our world and the afterlife, and her father is still there. When her mother disappears, Melanie must follow her to Half World and neither of them may return alive. Imagine  Coraline  as filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki ( Howl’s Moving Castle ), or Neil Gaiman collaborating with Charles de Lint. Half World is vivid, visceral, unforgettable, a combination of prose and images that will haunt you.

Heaven by Angela Johnson

At fourteen, Marley knows she has Momma’s hands and Pops’s love for ice cream, that her brother doesn’t get on her nerves too much, and that Uncle Jack is a big mystery. But Marley doesn’t know all she thinks she does, because she doesn’t know the truth. And when the truth comes down with the rain one stormy summer afternoon, it changes everything. It turns Momma and Pops into liars. It makes her brother a stranger and Uncle Jack an even bigger mystery.

All of a sudden, Marley doesn’t know who she is anymore and can only turn to the family she no longer trusts to find out.

Truth often brings change. Sometimes that change is for the good. Sometimes it isn’t. Coretta Scott King award-winning author Angela Johnson writes a poignant novel of deception and self-discovery—about finding the truth and knowing what to do when truth is at hand.

Heroes by Robert Cormier

Francis lost most of his face when he fell on a grenade in France. He received the Silver Star for bravery, but was it really an act of heroism? Now, having survived, he is looking for a man he once admired and respected, a man adored by many people, a man who also received a Silver Star for bravery. A man who destroyed Francis’s life.

High Dive by Tammar Stein

Arden has a plane ticket to Sardinia to say goodbye to her family’s beloved vacation home after her father’s sudden death and her mother’s deployment to Iraq as an army nurse. Lonely for her father and petrified for her mother’s safety, Arden dreads her trip to the house in Sardinia—the only place that has truly felt like home to her. So when she meets a group of fun, carefree, and careless friends on their summer break, she decides to put off her trip and join them to sample the sights and culinary delights of Europe. Soon they are climbing the Eiffel Tower, taking in the French countryside on a train chugging toward the Alps, and gazing at Michelangelo’s  David  in Florence, all the while eating gelato and sipping cappuccino. Arden tries to forget about the danger her mom faces every day, to pretend she’s just like the rest of the girls, flirting with cute European guys and worried only about where to party next. But the house in Sardinia beckons and she has to make a choice. Is Arden ready to jump off the high dive?

Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler

“Thou art the Black Rider. Go thee out unto the world.”

Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she’s been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home—her constant battle with hunger, and her struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life, and to face the horrifying effects of her phenomenal power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power—and the courage to fight her own inner demons?

A wildly original approach to the issue of eating disorders, Hunger is about the struggle to find balance in a world of extremes, and uses fantastic tropes to explore a difficult topic that touches the lives of many teens.

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly

I Kill Giants  tells the story of Barbara Thorson, an acerbic fifth-grader so consumed with fantasy that she doesn’t just tell people that she kills giants with an ancient Norse warhammer—she starts to believe it herself. The reasons for Barbara’s troubled behavior are revealed through the course of the book, as she learns to reconcile her fantasy life with the real world.

I Love, I Hate, I Miss My Sister by Amelie Sarn

Two sisters. Two lives. One future.

Sohane loves no one more than her beautiful, carefree younger sister, Djelila. And she hates no one as much. They used to share everything. But now, Djelila is spending more time with her friends, partying, and hanging out with boys, while Sohane is becoming more religious.

When Sohane starts wearing a head scarf, her school threatens to expel her. Meanwhile, Djelila is harassed by neighborhood bullies for not being Muslim  enough .  Sohane can’t help thinking that Djelila deserves what she gets. But she never could have imagined just how far things would go…

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces—to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family.

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan

Seventeen-year-old Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared stolen kisses and romantic promises. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love—Sahar and Nasrin could be beaten, imprisoned, even executed. So they carry on in secret until Nasrin’s parents suddenly announce that they’ve arranged for her marriage. Then Sahar discovers what seems like the perfect solution: homosexuality may be a crime, but to be a man trapped in a woman’s body is seen as nature’s mistake, and sex reassignment is legal and accessible. Sahar will never be able to love Nasrin in the body she wants to be loved in without risking their lives, but is saving their love worth sacrificing her true self?

Jaya and Rasa by Sonia Patel

Seventeen-year-old Jaya Mehta detests wealth, secrets, and privilege, though he has them all. His family is Indian, originally from Gujarat. Rasa Santos, like many in Hawaii, is of mixed ethnicity. All she has are siblings, three of them, plus a mother who controls men like a black widow spider and leaves her children whenever she wants to. Neither Jaya nor Rasa have ever known real love or close family—not until their chance meeting one sunny day on a mountain in Hau’ula.

The unlikely love that blooms between them must survive the stranglehold their respective pasts have on them. Each of their present identities has been shaped by years of extreme family struggles. By the time they cross paths, Jaya is a transgender outsider with depressive tendencies and the stunningly beautiful Rasa thinks sex is her only power until a violent pimp takes over her life. Will their love transcend and pull them forward, or will they remain stuck and separate in the chaos of their pasts?

Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia

Trina:  “Hey,” I say, though I don’t really know them. It’s okay if they don’t speak. I know how it is. They can’t all be Trina.

Dominique:  Some stupid little flit cuts right between us and is like, “Hey.” I slam my fist into my other hand because she’s as good as jumped.

Leticia:  Girl fights are ugly. Girl fights are personal. And who’s to say I wasn’t seeing it from the wrong angle?

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt

Keturah, renowned for her storytelling, follows a legendary hart deep into the forest, where she becomes hopelessly lost. Her strength diminishes until, finally, she realizes that death is near—and learns then that death is a young lord, melancholy and stern. She is able to charm Lord Death with a story and gain a reprieve, but he grants her only a day, and within that day she must find true love. A mesmerizing love story, interweaving elements of classic fantasy and high romance.

Kissing The Bee by Kathe Koja

Senior year is flying by, the prom is approaching, and Dana, her best friend, Avra, and Avra’s boyfriend, Emil, are about to encounter the pains and pleasures of that intricate beehive called adult life. While Dana plans on college, Avra plots escape once school is over—and plans to take Emil along for the ride. What does Emil want? He’s not saying. Dana studies bees for a biology project, fascinated by their habits and their mythological imagery—but in real life, emotions can sting, and while two’s company, these three may just become a crowd. As Dana reminds us, in every hive there is only one queen bee.

With remarkably textured language and a distinctive heroine,  Kissing the Bee  is a novel of rare depth and stark honesty that will draw readers in from the very first page.

The Knife and The Butterfly by Ashley Hope Perez

After a marijuana-addled brawl with a rival gang, 16-year-old Azael wakes up to find himself surrounded by a familiar set of concrete walls and a locked door. Juvie again, he thinks. But he can’t really remember what happened or how he got picked up. He knows his MS13 boys faced off with some punks from Crazy Crew. There were bats, bricks, chains. A knife. But he can’t remember anything between that moment and when he woke behind bars.

Azael knows prison, and something isn’t right about this lockup. No phone call. No lawyer. No news about his brother or his homies. The only thing they make him do is watch some white girl in some cell. Watch her and try to remember.

Lexi Allen would love to forget the brawl, would love for it to disappear back into the Xanax fog it came from. And her mother and her lawyer hope she chooses not to remember too much about the brawl—at least when it’s time to testify.

Lexi knows there’s more at stake in her trial than her life alone, though. She’s connected to him, and he needs the truth. The knife cut, but somehow it also connected.

Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet by Kashmira Sheth

Jeeta dreads the Indian tradition of arranged marriages that her two older sisters are currently going through and wonders if she will be able to break away from her family’s expectations when her time comes, in a coming-of-age story set in contemporary Mumbai, India.

The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist by Margarita Engle

Opposing slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century was dangerous. The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. Of these, the boldest was Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, nicknamed Tula. In passionate, accessible verses of her own, Engle evokes the voice of this book-loving feminist and abolitionist who bravely resisted an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen, and was ultimately courageous enough to fight against injustice. Historical notes, excerpts, and source notes round out this exceptional tribute.

Little Peach by Peggy Kern

What do you do if you’re in trouble?

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: She is alone and out of options.

Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place for her to stay, and eyes that seem to understand exactly how she feels. But Devon is not who he seems to be, and soon Michelle finds herself engulfed in the world of child prostitution, where he becomes her “Daddy” and she is his “Little Peach.” It is a world of impossible choices, where the line between love and abuse, captor and savior, is blurred beyond recognition.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who disappeared.

Once upon a time, my name was not Alice.

Once upon a time, I didn’t know how lucky I was.

When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends—her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over.

Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her.

This is Alice’s story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.

March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff

Only women and girls are allowed in the Red Abbey, a haven from abuse and poverty. Maresi, a thirteen-year-old novice who fled famine and loss four years prior, is happy in the abbey, safe under the protection of the Mother, contentedly doing her chores and stealing time in the vast library of the House of Knowledge. But then Jai, a girl with a dark past, disrupts Maresi’s idyllic existence.

Jai has escaped her home after watching her father and brothers bury her beloved sister alive in an honor killing. And when the dangers of the outside world follow Jai into the sacred space of the abbey, Maresi can no longer hide behind her books and routines—she must act.

Memento Nora by Angie Smibert

Nora’s world you don’t have to put up with nightmares. Nora goeswith her mother to TFC—a Therapeutic Forgetting Clinic. There, she can describe her horrible memory and take the pill that will erase it. But at TFC, a chance encounter with a mysterious guy changes Nora’s life. She doesn’t take the pill. And when Nora learns the memory her mother has chosen to forget, she realizes that someone needs to  remember.  With newfound friends Micah and Winter, Nora makes a comic book of their memories called  M emento.  It’s an instant hit, but it sets off a dangerous chain of events. Will Nora, Micah, and Winter be forced to take the Big Pill that will erase their memories forever?

Muchaco by LouAnne Johnson

Eddie Corazon is angry. He’s also very smart. But he’s working pretty hard at being a juvenile delinquent. He blows off school, even though he’s a secret reader. He hangs with his cousins, who will always back him up—when they aren’t in jail.

Then along comes Lupe, who makes his blood race. She sees something in Eddie he doesn’t even see in himself. A heart, and a mind, and something more: a poet. But in Eddie’s world, it’s a thin line between tragedy and glory. And what goes down is entirely in Eddie’s hands.

Gripping, thought-provoking, and hopeful,  Muchacho  is a rare and inspiring story about one teen’s determination to fight his circumstances and shape his own destiny.

The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor

Nothing ever happens on the Otter Lake reservation. But when 16-year-old Tiffany discovers her father is renting out her room, she’s deeply upset. Sure, their guest is polite and keeps to himself, but he’s also a little creepy. Little do Tiffany, her father, or even her astute Granny Ruth suspect the truth. The mysterious Pierre L’Errant is actually a vampire, returning to his tribal home after centuries spent in Europe. But Tiffany has other things on her mind: her new boyfriend is acting weird, disputes with her father are escalating, and her estranged mother is starting a new life with somebody else. Fed up and heartsick, Tiffany threatens drastic measures and flees into the bush. There, in the midnight woods, a chilling encounter with L’Errant changes everything…for both of them.

Nobody’s Secret by Michaela MacColl

When fifteen-year-old Emily Dickinson meets a mysterious, handsome young man who doesn’t seem to know who she or her family is and playfully refuses to divulge his name, she’s intrigued. She enjoys her secret flirtation with “Mr. Nobody”—until he turns up dead in her family’s pond. She’s stricken with guilt and is determined to discover who this enigmatic stranger was before he’s buried in an anonymous grave, an investigation that takes her deep into town secrets, blossoming romance, and deadly danger. A celebration of Emily Dickinson’s intellect and spunk, this exquisitely written and meticulously researched page-turner will excite fans of mystery, romance, and poetry alike.

# NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale

Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible.

October Mourning by Leslea Newman

On the night of October 6, 1998, a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die. Gay Awareness Week was beginning at the University of Wyoming, and the keynote speaker was Lesléa Newman, discussing her book  Heather Has Two Mommies . Shaken, the author addressed the large audience that gathered, but she remained haunted by Matthew’s murder.  October Mourning,  a novel in verse, is her deeply felt response to the events of that tragic day. Using her poetic imagination, the author creates fictitious monologues from various points of view, including the fence Matthew was tied to, the stars that watched over him, the deer that kept him company, and Matthew himself. More than a decade later, this stunning cycle of sixty-eight poems serves as an illumination for readers too young to remember, and as a powerful, enduring tribute to Matthew Shepard’s life.

Open Mic: Riffs On Life Between Cultures by Mitali Perkins

Listen in as ten YA authors—some familiar, some new—use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Henry Choi Lee discovers that pretending to be a tai chi master or a sought-after wiz at math wins him friends for a while—until it comically backfires. A biracial girl is amused when her dad clears seats for his family on a crowded subway in under a minute flat, simply by sitting quietly in between two uptight white women. Edited by acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction uses a mix of styles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poignant, in prose, poetry, and comic form.

The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin

Tamika Sykes, AKA Mik, is hearing impaired and way too smart for her West Bronx high school. She copes by reading lips and selling homework answers, and looks forward to the time each day when she can be alone in her room drawing. She’s a tough girl who mostly keeps to herself and can shut anyone out with the click of her hearing aid. But then she meets Fatima, a teenage refugee who sells newspapers, and Jimmi, a homeless vet who is shunned by the rest of the community, and her life takes an unexpected turn.

The Outsiders by SE Hinton

Ponyboy can count on his brothers. And on his friends. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a goo d time is beating up on “greasers” like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect—until the night someone takes things too far.

Pasadena by Sherri L. Smith

Bad things happen everywhere. Even in the land of sun and roses.

When Jude’s best friend is found dead in a swimming pool, her family calls it an accident. Her friends call it suicide. But Jude calls it what it is: murder. And someone has to pay. Now everyone is a suspect—family and friends alike. And Jude is digging up the past like bones from a shallow grave. Anything to get closer to the truth. But that’s the thing about secrets. Once they start turning up, nothing is sacred. And Jude’s got a few skeletons of her own.

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

When high school sophomores John and Lorraine made a prank phone call to an elderly stranger named Angelo Pignati, what starts as a practical joke quickly turns into a friendship that changes all of their lives forever. But when their friendship ends in tragedy, the only way for John and Lorraine to find peace is to write down their friend’s story—the true story of the Pigman.

Pink by Lili Wilkinson

Ava is tired of her ultracool attitude, ultraradical politics, and ultrablack clothing. She’s ready to try something new—she’s even ready to be someone new. Someone who fits in, someone with a gorgeous boyfriend, someone who wears pink.

But Ava soon finds that changing herself is more complicated than changing her wardrobe. Even getting involved in the school musical raises issues she never imagined. As she faces surprising choices and unforeseen consequences, Ava wonders if she will ever figure out who she really wants to be.

Poisoned Apples: Poems For You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann

Cruelties come not just from wicked stepmothers, but also from ourselves. There are expectations, pressures, judgment, and criticism. Self-doubt and self-confidence. But there are also friends, and sisters, and a whole hell of a lot of power there for the taking. In fifty poems, Christine Heppermann confronts society head on. Using fairy tale characters and tropes,  Poisoned Apples  explores how girls are taught to think about themselves, their bodies, and their friends. The poems range from contemporary retellings to first-person accounts set within the original tales, and from deadly funny to deadly serious. Complemented throughout with black-and-white photographs from up-and-coming artists, this is a stunning and sophisticated book to be treasured, shared, and paged through again and again.

Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

Jason Carrillo  is a jock with a steady girlfriend, but he can’t stop dreaming about sex…with other guys. Kyle Meeks  doesn’t  look  gay, but he is. And he hopes he never has to tell anyone — —especially his parents. Nelson Glassman  is “out” to the entire world, but he can’t tell the boy he loves that he wants to be more than just friends. Three teenage boys, coming of age and out of the closet. In a revealing debut novel that percolates with passion and wit, Alex Sanchez follows these very different high-school seniors as their struggles with sexuality and intolerance draw them into a triangle of love, betrayal, and ultimately, friendship.

Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story by Caren Stelson

This striking work of narrative nonfiction tells the true story of six-year-old Sachiko Yasui’s survival of the Nagasaki atomic bomb on August 9, 1945, and the heartbreaking and lifelong aftermath. Having conducted extensive interviews with Sachiko Yasui, Caren Stelson chronicles Sachiko s trauma and loss as well as her long journey to find peace. This book offers readers a remarkable new perspective on the final moments of World War II and their aftermath.

See No Color by Shannon Gibney

For as long as she can remember, sixteen-year-old Alex Kirtridge has known two things: 1. She has always been Little Kirtridge, a stellar baseball player, just like her father. 2. She’s adopted.

These facts have always been part of Alex’s life. Despite some teasing, being a biracial girl in a white family didn’t make much of a difference as long as she was a star on the diamond where her father her baseball coach and a former pro player counted on her. But now, things are changing: she meets Reggie, the first black guy who’s wanted to get to know her; she discovers the letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept from her; and her body starts to grow into a woman’s, affecting her game.

Alex begins to question who she really is. She’s always dreamed of playing pro baseball just like her father, but can she really do it? Does she truly fit in with her white family? Who were her biological parents? What does it mean to be black? If she’s going to find answers, Alex has to come to terms with her adoption, her race, and the dreams she thought would always guide her.

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by  Ron Koertge

When MVP Kevin Boland gets the news that he has mono and won’t be seeing a baseball field for a while, he suddenly finds himself scrawling a poem down the middle of a page in his journal. To get some help, he cops a poetry book from his dad’s den—and before Kevin knows it, he’s writing in verse about stuff like, Will his jock friends give up on him? What’s the deal with girlfriends? Surprisingly enough, after his health improves, he keeps on writing, about the smart-talking Latina girl who thinks poets are cool, and even about his mother, whose death is a still-tender loss. Written in free verse with examples of several poetic forms slipped into the mix, including a sonnet, haiku, pastoral, and even a pantoum, this funny, poignant story by a master of dialogue is an English teacher’s dream—sure to hook poetry lovers, baseball fanatics, mono recoverers, and everyone in between.

She Wore Red Trainers by Na’ima B. Robert

When Ali first meets Amirah, he notices everything about her—her hijab, her long eyelashes and her red trainers—in the time it takes to have one look, before lowering his gaze. And, although Ali is still coming to terms with the loss of his mother and exploring his identity as a Muslim, and although Amirah has sworn never to get married, they can’t stop thinking about each other. Can Ali and Amirah ever have a halal “happily ever after”?

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

“Speak up for yourself—we want to know what you have to say.” From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication. In Laurie Halse Anderson’s powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself.

A Step From Heaven by An Na

At age four, Young Ju moves with her parents from Korea to Southern California. She has always imagined America would be like heaven: easy, blissful, and full of riches. But when her family arrives, she finds it to be the opposite. With a stubborn language barrier and cultural dissimilarities, not only is it impossible to make friends, but even her family’s internal bonds are wavering. Her parents’ finances are strained, yet her father’s stomach is full of booze.

As Young Ju’s once solid and reliable family starts tearing apart, her younger brother begins to gain more freedom and respect simply because of his gender. Young Ju begins to lose all hope in the dream she once held—the heaven she longs for. Even as she begins to finally fit in, a cataclysmic family event will change her idea of heaven forever. But it also helps her to recognize the strength she holds, and envision the future she desires, and deserves.

Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr

I was thirteen when my dad caught me with Tommy Webber in the back of Tommy’s Buick, parked next to the old Chart House down in Montara at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. Tommy was seventeen and the supposed friend of my brother, Darren. I didn’t love him. I’m not sure I even liked him.

In a moment, Deanna Lambert’s teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of “school slut,” Deanna longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom, and striking emotion,  Story of a Girl  reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany, and redemption.

Street Love by Walter Dean Myers

Your first love is totally wrong for you. Do you follow your heart? Or do you run away?

What am I doing? He’ll take one quick look And wish he was anywhere else but here I’m already ashamed of what I think He will think of me, of the life I lead

Yes, she is the fruit that will Sustain me and yes, she brings A rain that I know can chill But it is a rain so sweet and sings A song my soul insists That I follow, if I would exist As more than I have ever, ever been If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Truman

Shawn McDaniel’s life is not what it may seem to anyone looking at him. He is glued to his wheelchair, unable to voluntarily move a muscle—he can’t even move his eyes. For all Shawn’s father knows, his son may be suffering. Shawn may want a release. And as long as he is unable to communicate his true feelings to his father, Shawn’s life is in danger.

To the world, Shawn’s senses seem dead. Within these pages, however, we meet a side of him that no one else has seen—a spirit that is rich beyond imagining, breathing life.

Sunday You Learn How To Box by Bil Wright

Fourteen-year-old Louis Bowman lives in a boxing ring—a housing project circa 1968—and is fighting “just to get to the end of the round.” Sharing the ring is his mother, Jeanette Stamps, a ferociously stubborn woman battling for her own dreams to be realized; his stepfather, Ben Stamps, the would-be savior, who becomes the sparring partner to them both; and the enigmatic Ray Anthony Robinson, the neighborhood “hoodlum” in purple polyester pants, who sets young Louis’s heart spinning with the first stirrings of sexual longing.

Tag Along by Tom Ryan

It’s junior prom night. Andrea is grounded for getting her older brother to buy booze for her, Paul is having panic attacks, Roemi has been stood up by his Internet date, and Candace is busy tagging a building (before she gets collared by a particularly tenacious cop). By happenstance, the four near-strangers end up together, getting into more trouble, arguing and ultimately helping each other out over the course of eight madcap hours.

Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince

Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a “devil child” for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life.

At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family, who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes. She went on to study at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre and is now the youngest principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She has appeared in the ballet documentary  First Position , as well as on  Dancing with the Stars, Good Morning America , and  Nightline .

In this engaging, moving, and unforgettable memoir, Michaela shares her dramatic journey from an orphan in West Africa to becoming one of ballet’s most exciting rising stars.

Tears of a Tiger by Sharon Draper

Andy Jackson was driving the car that crashed one night after a game, killing Robert Washington, his best friend and the captain of the Hazelwood High Tigers. It was late, and they’d been drinking, and now, months later, Andy can’t stop blaming himself. As he turns away from family, friends, and even his girlfriend, he finds he’s losing the most precious thing of all—his ability to face the future.

Tomboy by Liz Prince

Growing up, Liz Prince wasn’t a girly girl, dressing in pink tutus or playing Pretty Pretty Princess like the other girls in her neighborhood. But she wasn’t exactly one of the guys either, as she quickly learned when her Little League baseball coach exiled her to the outfield instead of letting her take the pitcher’s mound. Liz was somewhere in the middle, and  Tomboy  is the story of her struggle to find the place where she belonged.

Tomboy  is a graphic novel about refusing gender boundaries, yet unwittingly embracing gender stereotypes at the same time, and realizing later in life that you can be just as much of a girl in jeans and a T-shirt as you can in a pink tutu. Tomboy explores Liz’s ever-evolving struggles and wishes regarding what it means to be a girl.

This Land Is Our Land: A History of American Immigration by Linda Barrett Osborne

American attitudes toward immigrants are paradoxical. On the one hand, we see our country as a haven for the poor and oppressed; anyone, no matter his or her background, can find freedom here and achieve the “American Dream.” On the other hand, depending on prevailing economic conditions, fluctuating feelings about race and ethnicity, and fear of foreign political and labor agitation, we set boundaries and restrictions on who may come to this country and whether they may stay as citizens. This book explores the way government policy and popular responses to immigrant groups evolved throughout U.S. history, particularly between 1800 and 1965. The book concludes with a summary of events up to contemporary times, as immigration again becomes a hot-button issue.

This Way Home by Wes Moore

Elijah Thomas knows one thing better than anyone around him: basketball. But when a sinister street gang, Blood Street Nation, wants him and his team members to wear the Nation’s colors in the next big tournament, Elijah’s love of the game is soon thrown into jeopardy.

The boys gather their courage and take a stand against the gang, but at a terrible cost. Now Elijah must struggle to balance hope and fear, revenge and forgiveness, to save his neighborhood. For help, he turns to the most unlikely of friends: Banks, a gruff ex-military man, and his beautiful and ambitious daughter. Together, the three work on a plan to destroy Blood Street and rebuild the community they all call home.

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to “Our Neighbor’s House”—though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.” You might try to figure out what is haunting “My Friend Janna,” or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems in “The Nesting Place.” And of course you must revisit the horror of “His Face All Red,” the breakout webcomic hit that has been gorgeously translated to the printed page.

Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap and Mari Araki

Tina M., sophomore, is a wry observer of the cliques and mores of Yarborough Academy, and of the foibles of her Southern California intellectual Indian family. She’s on a first-name basis with Jean-Paul Sartre, the result of an English honors class assignment to keep an “existential diary.”

A Trick of the Light by Lois Metzger

Mike Welles had everything under control. But that was before. Now things are rough at home, and they’re getting confusing at school. He’s losing his sense of direction, and he feels like he’s a mess. Then there’s a voice in his head. A friend, who’s trying to help him get control again. More than that—the voice can guide him to become faster and stronger than he was before, to rid his life of everything that’s holding him back. To figure out who he is again. If only Mike will listen.

The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu

Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. When Healy High star quarterback, Brandon Fitzsimmons, dies in a car crash, it was because he was sexting with Alice. Ask  anybody .

Rumor has it Alice Franklin is a slut. It’s written all over the “slut stall” in the girls’ bathroom: “Alice had sex in exchange for math test answers” and “Alice got an abortion last semester.” After Brandon dies, the rumors start to spiral out of control. In this remarkable debut novel, four Healy High students tell all they “know” about Alice—and in doing so reveal their own secrets and motivations, painting a raw look at the realities of teen life. But in this novel from Jennifer Mathieu, exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there’s only one person to ask: Alice herself.

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Based on true events—and narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS— Two Boys Kissing  follows Harry and Craig, two seventeen-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record. While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teens dealing with universal questions of love, identity, and belonging.

Under The Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

When Lupita discovers Mami has been diagnosed with cancer, she is terrified by the possibility of losing her mother, the anchor of their close-knit Mexican American family.

In the midst of juggling high school classes, finding her voice as an actress, and dealing with friends who don’t always understand, Lupita desperately wants to support her mother by doing anything she can to help. While Papi is preoccupied with caring for Mami, Lupita takes charge of her seven younger siblings. Struggling in her new roles and overwhelmed by change, Lupita escapes the chaos of home by writing in the shade of a mesquite tree, seeking refuge in the healing power of words.

Uses for Boys by Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, just the two of them against the world. But now her mom is gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, brining home the next stepfather. Anna is left on her own—until she discovers that she can make boys her family. From Desmond to Joey, Todd to Sam, Anna learns that if you give boys what they want, you can get what you need. But the price is high—the other kids make fun of her; the girls call her a slut. Anna’s new friend, Toy, seems to have found a way around the loneliness, but Toy has her own secrets that even Anna can’t know.

Then comes Sam. When Anna actually meets a boy who is more than just useful, whose family eats dinner together, laughs, and tells stories, the truth about love becomes clear. And she finally learns how it feels to have something to lose—and something to offer.

Wake by Lisa McMann

For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people’s dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie’s seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime.

She can’t tell anybody about what she does—they’d never believe her, or worse, they’d think she’s a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn’t want and can’t control.

Then she falls into a gruesome nightmare, one that chills her to the bone. For the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else’s twisted psyche. She is a participant…

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

Lanky lizards and rubber chickens, slinkster dogs and Lanka girls—Weetzie Bat knows them all in the glitzy never-never land of L.A. With her blonde flat-top and trendy clothes, Weetzie Bat cruises from high school to neon clubs, looking for her Secret Agent Lover Man. When she meets dark-haired Dirk and his red Pontiac, their search for love is a funky, off-beat fable. And when three wishes come true, their adventures create a modern fairy tale.

What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold

When Nina Faye was fourteen, her mother told her there was no such thing as unconditional love. Nina believed her. Now she’ll do anything for the boy she loves, to prove she’s worthy of him. But when he breaks up with her, Nina is lost. What is she if not a girlfriend? What is she made of? Broken-hearted, Nina tries to figure out what the conditions of love are.

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter’s senior year of high school, he is forced to examine everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears.

Meanwhile, the crisis of faith spawned by a young missionary’s disillusion in Africa prompts a frantic search for meaning that has far-reaching consequences. As distant as the two stories initially seem, they are woven together through masterful plotting and merge in a surprising and harrowing climax.

Yoko Ono: Collector of Skies by Nell Beram and Carolyn Boriss-Krimsky

This lyrical biography explores the life and art of Yoko Ono, from her childhood haiku to her avant-garde visual art and experimental music. An outcast throughout most of her life, and misunderstood by every group she was supposed to belong to, Yoko always followed her own unique vision to create art that was ahead of its time and would later be celebrated. Her focus remained on being an artist, even when the rest of world saw her only as the wife of John Lennon. Yoko Ono’s moving story will inspire any young adult who has ever felt like an outsider, or who is developing or questioning ideas about being an artist, to follow their dreams and find beauty in all that surrounds them.

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The Great American Novels

In 1868, a little-known writer by the name of John William DeForest proposed a new type of literature, a collective artistic project for a nation just emerging from an existential conflict: a work of fiction that accomplished “the task of painting the American soul.” It would be called the Great American Novel, and no one had written it yet, DeForest admitted. Maybe soon.

A century and a half later, the idea has endured, even as it has become more complicated. In 2024, our definition of literary greatness is wider, deeper, and weirder than DeForest likely could have imagined. At the same time, the novel is also under threat, as the forces of anti-intellectualism and authoritarianism seek to ban books and curtail freedom of expression. The American canon is more capacious, more fluid, and more fragile than perhaps ever before. But what, exactly, is in it? What follows is our attempt to discover just that.

In setting out to identify that new American canon, we decided to define American as having first been published in the United States (or intended to be—read more in our entries on Lolita and The Bell Jar ). And we narrowed our aperture to the past 100 years—a period that began as literary modernism was cresting and contains all manner of literary pleasure and possibility, including the experimentations of postmodernism and the narrative satisfactions of genre fiction.

This still left millions of potential titles. So we approached experts—scholars, critics, and novelists, both at The Atlantic and outside it—and asked for their suggestions. From there, we added and subtracted and debated and negotiated and considered and reconsidered until we landed on the list you’re about to read. We didn’t limit ourselves to a round, arbitrary number; we wanted to recognize the very best—novels that say something intriguing about the world and do it distinctively, in intentional, artful prose—no matter how many or few that ended up being (136, as it turns out). Our goal was to single out those classics that stand the test of time, but also to make the case for the unexpected, the unfairly forgotten, and the recently published works that already feel indelible. We aimed for comprehensiveness, rigor, and open-mindedness. Serendipity, too: We hoped to replicate that particular joy of a friend pressing a book into your hand and saying, “You have to read this; you’ll love it.”

This list includes 45 debut novels, nine winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and three children’s books. Twelve were published before the introduction of the mass-market paperback to America, and 24 after the release of the Kindle. At least 60 have been banned by schools or libraries. Together, they represent the best of what novels can do: challenge us, delight us, pull us in and then release us, a little smarter and a little more alive than we were before. You have to read them.

• JUMP TO DECADE

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser

The Making of Americans

Gertrude Stein

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway

Nella Larsen

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom!

Djuna Barnes

East Goes West

Younghill Kang

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

John Dos Passos

Ask the Dust

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

Richard Wright

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers

A Time to Be Born

Dawn Powell

All the King’s Men

Robert Penn Warren

In a Lonely Place

Dorothy B. Hughes

The Mountain Lion

Jean Stafford

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

Charlotte’s Web

E. B. White

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Maud Martha

Gwendolyn Brooks

The Adventures of Augie March

Saul Bellow

Vladimir Nabokov

Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin

Peyton Place

Grace Metalious

Patricia Highsmith

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson

Joseph Heller

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

Another Country

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Zebra-Striped Hearse

Ross Macdonald

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

Mary McCarthy

The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon

A Sport and a Pastime

James Salter

John Updike

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick

Susan Taubes

Portnoy’s Complaint

Philip Roth

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Desperate Characters

Play It as It Lays

Joan Didion

Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine

Stanley Crawford

Mumbo Jumbo

Ishmael Reed

Toni Morrison

The Revolt of the Cockroach People

Oscar Zeta Acosta

The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin

Winter in the Blood

James Welch

Corregidora

Renata Adler

Leslie Marmon Silko

Song of Solomon

A Contract With God

Will Eisner

Dancer From the Dance

Andrew Holleran

Stephen King

Octavia E. Butler

The Dog of the South

Charles Portis

Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

The Salt Eaters

Toni Cade Bambara

Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament

John Crowley

Oxherding Tale

Charles Johnson

Machine Dreams

Jayne Anne Phillips

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

A Summons to Memphis

Peter Taylor

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Katherine Dunn

Tripmaster Monkey

Maxine Hong Kingston

Jessica Hagedorn

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez

Norman Rush

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

So Far From God

Ana Castillo

Stone Butch Blues

Leslie Feinberg

The Shipping News

Annie Proulx

Native Speaker

Chang-rae Lee

Sabbath’s Theater

Under the Feet of Jesus

Helena María Viramontes

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

I Love Dick

Chris Kraus

Don DeLillo

The Intuitionist

Colson Whitehead

Joyce Carol Oates

House of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon

The Last Samurai

Helen DeWitt

The Quick and the Dead

Joy Williams

Percival Everett

I, the Divine

Rabih Alameddine

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen

Sandra Cisneros

Debra Magpie Earling

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Gary Shteyngart

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri

Mary Gaitskill

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

A Visit From the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Karen Tei Yamashita

Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward

The Round House

Louise Erdrich

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Imogen Binnie

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Family Life

Akhil Sharma

Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff

The Fifth Season

N. K. Jemisin

The Sellout

Paul Beatty

The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Amiable With Big Teeth

Claude McKay

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders

Nick Drnaso

There There

Tommy Orange

Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli

Nothing to See Here

Kevin Wilson

The Old Drift

Namwali Serpell

No One Is Talking About This

Patricia Lockwood

The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Biography of X

Catherine Lacey