The 30 Best Short Books to Read in a Day

Foster

Beautifully austere and moving, this international best-seller explores themes of family and belonging over the course of a summer when a child is taken by her father to live with relatives in rural Ireland. Not knowing when or if her father will return, the child begins to thrive with her foster parents, who offer a world of warmth and affection she’s never experienced. The New York Times praised Foster as “a master class in child narration,” and the Irish Independent called it “a real jewel.”

Treacle Walker

This "playful, moving, and wholly remarkable" coming-of-age fable by an acclaimed English fantasy writer was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and praised by The Guardian for “cramming into its 150-odd pages more ideas and imagination than most authors manage in their whole careers.”

The Vegetarian

Set in modern-day Seoul, this Booker-winning novella follows Yeong-hye, a home-maker whose life takes a dramatic turn after a series of vivid nightmares move her to renounce meat. As her vegetarianism escalates into a complete refusal to consume any animal product, her decision triggers intense familial and societal conflict, revealing a deep-seated darkness within those around her. Hailed by critics, this story of one woman's struggle for self-expression will leave readers captivated.

Cecilia

The latest from the Organ Meats and Bestiary author is an erotic, surreal novella that Kirkus said “leaves the reader with the same feeling one has after eating a particularly indulgent meal--satiation, with the knowledge of more hunger to come."

Elena Knows

This “short and stylish” murder mystery from the third most translated Argentinian author after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, with The New York Times hailing “a piercing commentary on mother-daughter relationships, the indignity of bureaucracy, the burdens of caregiving and the impositions of religious dogma on women."

Dept. of Speculation

This introspective novel by Jenny Offill explores the complexities of marriage, motherhood and the challenges of modern life through an unnamed narrator only referred to as “the wife.” A writer and young mother, the narrator takes readers along an emotional journey of her life, from marriage to parenthood to ambitions sacrificed for family. “It’s a novel that’s wonderfully hard to encapsulate... and glitters with different emotional colors," James Wood wrote in The New Yorker.

McGlue: A Novella

The debut novella from the acclaimed My Year of Rest and Relaxation author “reads like the swashbuckled spray of a slit throat--immediate, visceral, frank, unforgiving, violent,” declared the Los Angeles Review of Books. Readers are transported to the mind of a 19th century man struggling to piece together a friend’s murder that he may have committed in a work with the “urgency of short fiction married with the grandiosity of an epic at-sea classic.”

The Dry Heart

First published in 1947, a woman murders her husband then goes out for coffee in this “taught psychological thriller laced with horror” by the acclaimed Italian author and activist. “Short enough to read in one sitting, it's a feminist classic that exposes the dark side of marriage in clean, captivating prose,” declared the Chicago Tribune.

The English Understand Wool

In the latest from the eccentric Last Samurai author, a 17-year-old former millionaire with exacting tastes must write a tell-all memoir as she navigates the shark-filled waters of the publishing world. Artforum was smitten with this “sixty-one-page gripe wrapped in tissue and dressed up with a bow.”

A Shining

The 2023 Nobel Laureate’s dreamlike 75-pager recounts a lost man’s strange encounter in a forest that the Financial Times said “feels so momentous… You never quite know where you’re going. But it doesn’t matter: you want to follow, to move in step with the rhythm of these words.” This compact title is a terrific way to acquaint yourself with one of Norway’s most celebrated author and playwright.