18 Short Books You Can Read in One Weekend

There is a library somewhere out there that holds an infinite number books. Each book tells the story of another reality. One tells the story about your life as it stands, while another book describes the alternative life you might have lived if your choices were different at any stage in your life. What if you could go to the library to see how your life might have turned out? What if these lives were truly better?

Page count 304

Connell and Marianne both grew up in the same small community, but their similarities do not end there. When the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life-changing begins. Marianne and Connell were reunited years later at university. Although they strayed towards other people and possible options, they remained magnetically, irresistibly bonded back together. As she begins to spiral into self-destruction, Connell starts to look for meaning elsewhere and each must decide how far they will go to save the other.

Page count 304

Shelby Tebow is the first person to disappear. Meredith Dickey and Delilah Dickey, a 6-year-old girl, disappeared just blocks from Shelby’s location. This triggered fear in their once peaceful community. These incidents are connected? The case is finally closed after an interminable search that turned up more questions than answers. Now, 11 years later, Delilah shockingly returns.

We can assure you, even though this book is slightly longer that the others, you won’t be in a hurry to finish it.

Page count 384

Yuko Moriguchi was forced to end her engagement after a terrible revelation. She had nothing left but her one child, 4-year old Manami. Yuko Moriguchi has now quit after an accident on the campus of the middle school she teaches. She has one more lecture to give. She tells a story which reveals everything her students thought they knew about two of the peers she is talking about and sets off a plot for revenge.

Page count 234

This novel is intensely disturbing and frightening. It follows a couple who are caught up in a twisting unraveling of their darkest fears. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

“I’m thinking of ending things. It stays once it arrives. It stays. It stays. It’s always there. Always. Jake once said that a thought is often closer to reality than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.’ And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.”

Page count 256

Although it starts out as a sweet and innocent beach story, it will make you long for a private East Coast vacation. However, by the end, this story will leave you so stunned that you’ll continue to think about this book for days. It is full of family secrets, mystery, and a famous twist that you have to experience for yourself.

Page count 320

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer when she gets the offer of a lifetime: to ghost write the final books of best-selling author Verity Crawford’s most famous series, which she’s unable to finish after being in an accident. Verity’s husband encourages Lowen to come stay at their home to go through Verity’s office and notes for ideas for the rest of the series—and while she’s there, she finds much more than she bargained for.

Page count 331

Camille Preaker, a reporter fresh from a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital, has a troubling assignment. She must return home to cover the murders at her small hometown of two preteen girls. Camille has never spoken to her neurotic hypochondriac mother nor to her half-sister. A beautiful 13-year-old girl with a strange grip on the town, Camille has been silent for years. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

Page count 254

Dannie’s meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content. But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake.

Page count 288

Anne and Marco Conti seem like they have it all: a loving marriage, a beautiful home, and a beautiful baby girl, Cora. One night, however, they discover that a terrible crime has been committed while they are at a dinner party right next to each other. The parents are immediately suspected. But the truth is more complicated. Unsettling details of what actually happened are revealed inside the house. Detective Rasbach is certain that the panicked couple is hiding some kind of secret. Both Anne, Marco and their partner soon discover that Marco has secrets. Secrets they’ve been keeping for years.

Page count 336

This story is about the Chinese American family that lives in small-town Ohio in 1970s. Marilyn and James Lee love Lydia, and they are determined to see her fulfill their dreams. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that had been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

Page count 297

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever and whenever she goes. She is caught between being Black and White, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love.

Page count 224

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid of the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place. She may soon find it difficult to leave this mysterious house.

Page count 320

This critically acclaimed novel follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, new friends. Sex, drugs and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love and life on the fringes. Charlie is stuck between living his life and running from it. Charlie must learn to navigate the emotional roller coaster ride that is growing up.

Page count 224

Just after midnight, the snowdrift stops the famous Orient Express from moving forward. Samuel Edward Ratchett, a millionaire, is found dead in his compartment. He was stabbed 12 times and his door was locked from the inside. One of his fellow passengers is certain to be the murderer. Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man’s enemies before the murderer decides to strike again.

Page count 288

Blythe Connor wants to be the mother Violet needs. She is determined to be that comforting and warm mother she never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter—she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all just Blythe’s imagination? Fox, her husband, believes she’s imagining it. Fox’s dismissal of her fears makes Blythe question her own sanity. We also begin to question the information Blythe is giving us about her life.

Page count 320

Hidden in the London 18th century, a secret apothecary store caters to a unique clientele. Nella, a mysterious woman who sells well-hidden poisons to oppressive men, is a common tale among women in the city. Caroline Parcewell, an aspirant historian, spends her 10th anniversary in London alone, running away from her own demons. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London 200 years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.

Page count 352

A desperate young woman in Southern California sits down to write a letter to a man she’s never met—a choice that will forever change both their lives. The letters between Carrie Allsop, David Mayer, and their children reveal, piece by piece the devastating details of an affair between their spouses. They openly share their fears with each other and offer their sympathies. They share their confusion over the events and wonder where they will go next.

Page count 80