A curated collection of concise literary gems, this book list features titles with fewer than 200 pages.
The Deep
Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes
Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone,
Read More View in CatalogThornhedge
T. Kingfisher
There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story. Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the f
Read More View in CatalogThe Salt Grows Heavy
Cassandra Khaw
You may think you know how the fairy tale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes. On the run, the mermaid is
Read More View in CatalogA Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning
Lemony Snicket
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent children. They are charming, and resourceful, and have pleasant facial features. Unfortunately, they are exceptionally unlucky.
View in CatalogThe Grownup: A Gillian Flynn Short
Gillian Flynn
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator
Read More View in CatalogThe Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
Returning to his childhood home to attend a funeral, a middle-aged man is drawn back to a place once alive with monsters and magic; to a past where the impossible is all too frighteningly real.
View in CatalogDark Star Trilogy Series, Book 1
The Empress of Salt and Fortune
Nghi Vo
Winner of the 2020 Crawford Award! Winner of the 2021 Hugo Award! A Hugo Award-Winning Series! A 2021 Locus Award Finalist A 2021 Ignyte Award Finalist A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist "Dangerous, subtle, unexpected and familiar, angry and fero
Read More View in CatalogThe Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America's preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor-- of crystal pillars and fossil seas--where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civiliz
Read More View in CatalogMonk & Robot Series, Book 1
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Becky Chambers
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day,
Read More View in CatalogSworn Soldier Series, Book 1
What Moves the Dead
T. Kingfisher
When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and po
Read More View in CatalogThis Is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. In the ashes of a dying
Read More View in CatalogJaws
Peter Benchley
It was just another day in the life of a small Atlantic resort until the terror from the deep came to prey on unwary holiday makers. The first sign of trouble - a warning of what was to come - took the form of a young woman's body, or what was l
Read More View in CatalogMurderbot Diaries Series, Book 1
All Systems Red
Martha Wells
A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.&q
Read More View in CatalogRing Shout
P. Djèlí Clark
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to brin
Read More View in CatalogBinti
Nnedi Okorafor
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between
Read More View in CatalogLooking for Alaska
John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.
View in CatalogThe Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evi
Read More View in CatalogThe Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.
View in CatalogThe Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to
Read More View in CatalogTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong Black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon o
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