10 Stellar Short Reads

Step into the world of 1960s Paris ballet with the 2014 Nobel laureate’s "pithy and introspective" novella about a young dancer and single mother haunted by her past. “Modiano delivers wondrous images of the tricks memory plays, sharply translated by Polizzotti,” remarked Publishers Weekly. “Readers will savor this wistful narrative."

“Three Days in June might take only an afternoon to read, but it lingers in your mind long afterward,” declared cook and food critic Nigella Lawson. In her latest work, the author of Breathing Lessons follows a divorced mother through the emotional and chaotic days surrounding her daughter’s wedding. “Tyler’s particular genius is for capturing the fullness of character and feeling in so few words... Just relishable.”

The Suicides is the third volume of Antonio Di Benedetto's Trilogy of Expectation, a touchstone for Roberto Bolaño and deemed "one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century fiction" by Juan José Saer. Following Zama (set during the eighteenth century) and The Silentiary (set during the 1950s), this final work takes place in a provincial city in the late 1960s, as Argentina plummets toward the "Dirty War."

Selected for Belletrist's February book club, this "slim and lyrical memoir," which Publishers Weekly calls "pure Gallic magic," tells the unlikely but true story of how one man overcame a broken heart, regained his faith in literature, accidentally participated in a work of performance art, abandoned his turtlenecks, spent his rent money on a 1964 Bordeaux that nobody ever drank, and ultimately fell in love again.

A seductive 1954 iconic French novel that traces one reckless summer on the French Riviera, where a teen's pursuit of freedom collides with family secrets. The Guardian called this sharp critique of bourgeois life "sexy, poignant, moving" - and a must read.

The critically-acclaimed Turkish author weaves a "perfectly perceptive" story about an expat couple trying to plant roots in a foreign city, while their families back home go on with their lives. They tour apartments and commence building a life together, yet "there are no explosions or battle scenes in this subtle novel, just an appreciation of the value and marvels of living a life that is your own," observed Kirkus.

Translated from the Catalan, this queer love story follows a woman who falls in love with a fellow crew member while working on a merchant ship. When they relocate to Reykjavik, one decides to have a child, prompting a journey that forces the other to face her deepest desires and fears. The Booker judges called it "a sensuous, sexy, intense book. Baltasar condenses the sensations and experiences of a dozen more ordinary novels into just over one hundred pages of exhilarating prose."

Written by a Nigerian-British poet and filmmaker, this immersive, poetic epic captures one underground night in South London through poems, photos, and text messages, delivering what The New York Times calls writing that is "alive in the way poetry must be" and The Guardian praises as "hypnotic and freewheeling" in its portrait of "grief and euphoria" on the dance floor.

Featured in Vogue’s best books of 2025, this “moving depiction of the impressionistic emotional lessons of childhood” from the Lost actor and host of the Bookish podcast follows a daughter in Los Angeles reflecting on a tumultuous childhood and her larger-than-life father, a polo-playing Argentine bon vivant whose highs and lows left an indelible mark on her life.

A woman travels to Mexico and is drawn into the enigmatic orbit of an elderly stranger who claims to know secrets about her mother’s past, setting off a journey of discovery and self-reckoning that the Financial Times found “Evocative... subtle and enigmatic… In Rosarita, the known rubs up against the unknown, and a kaleidoscopic network of possible lives are lost and found in barely 100 pages.”