Brilliant books under 250 pages you can finish in one sitting
Think you don’t have time to read? These compact, compelling books will change your mind. Whether you’re easing back into reading or looking for something to savour in one go, sometimes all you need is a single afternoon, or even a long commute, to fall in love with a good book.
Short and sweet classics
It lies somewhere beneath the snow, high in the Dolomites: Nazi gold, tainted with the blood of murdered men. Only a few know its secrets, and one by one they come in search of it – a hot-tempered Italian Comtessa, a racketeering pimp, a Greek criminal, a film-maker and a hapless writer.
Enjoy this tense battle of wits leads to an explosive finale in Innes’ classic tale of revenge and deadly greed, coming in at 194 pages.
It only takes Fitzgerald 146 pages to create one of the most iconic characters of his generation.
The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby’s party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne his guests speculate about their mysterious host. Some say he’s a bootlegger. Others swear he was a German spy during the war. They lean in and whisper ‘he killed a man once’. Just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsession that drives him?
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?
Jacqueline Harpman transports the reader in 208 pages to a unique dystopian reality devoid of men. And while you may not find all the answers you seek about how and why things came to be for our narrator, the journey this classic will take you on is truly unforgettable.
An allegorical tale that packs a punch at 176 pages, Animal Farm is instilled with humour and an underlying urgency that makes this one of the most prescient warnings ever written.
Mr Jones, the owner of Manor Farm, is a lazy drunk. The animals decide to overthrow him in a revolution that will allow them to run the farm, liberating themselves and creating a new life of equality and freedom. But they have underestimated the pigs. Napoleon and Snowball form an elite and take control for themselves, and the tyranny of the farmer is replaced with another kind of control leaving the animals again subject to a ruthless and cruel authority.
Away from the quiet farmlands of Illinois, two lonely teenagers – bound by the burden of their home lives – forge a delicate friendship. But when jealousy ignites in one of their families, it leads to unthinkable tragedy, and severs the two boys' bond forever.
Fifty years later, haunted by the past, the narrator seeks to piece together those harrowing events and find redemption for a lifetime of regret. So Long, See You Tomorrow is a haunting exploration of memory, loss, and the enduring quest for forgiveness coming in at 176 pages.
An original feminist horror story told over 143 pages, The Yellow Wall-Paper endures as a groundbreaking, deeply disturbing classic.
In the throes of a ‘temporary nervous depression’ following childbirth, a woman is brought by her physician husband to recuperate in an isolated New England mansion.
There she is barred from her work of writing and encouraged to simply get better. Sequestered in the old nursery at the top of the house, with barred windows and a bed nailed to the floor, she has little to do but examine the strange wallpaper that surrounds her – and appears to shift before her very eyes.
Dive page-first into these picks
Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize at only 144 pages, as described by the Guardian , Orbital is 'a slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas.'
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
This compact manifesto of 128 pages from Timothy Snyder came back to the forefront with readers in 2025.
Today, we are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to totalitarianism in the twentieth century. But when the political order seems imperilled, our advantage is that we can learn from their experience to resist the advance of tyranny.
The Hotel by Daisy Johnson
For readers in the mood for something a little spookier, this collection of short stories from 'the demon offspring of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King' (Observer ) comes in at just 162 pages but will still leave you up all night.
A place of myths, rumours and secrets, The Hotel looms over the dark Fens, tall and grey in its Gothic splendour. To some it is familiar, to others a stranger. Many come out refreshed, longing to return. But a few are changed forever, haunted by their time there. And almost all those affected are women...
In this delightful novella of two young women coming of age, Tessa Hadley explores the ever-changing desires, the sudden revelations and the lasting mysteries that are bound up with who we are, and who we might become.
Starting on a wintery Saturday night in post-war Bristol, this 130 page read is one you can cosy up with over the course of one winter evening of your own.
The novel that catapulted Ottessa Moshfegh to literary stardom: a gorgeously sordid story of love and murder on the high seas.
McGlue is down in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of his name, situation or orientation – but he has blood on his hands. He may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend.
In 128 pages, Ottessa gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.
It’s the day before her daughter’s wedding and things are not going well for Gail Baines.
First thing, she loses her job (or quits, depending who you ask). Then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door looking for somewhere to stay. Just as Gail is wondering what’s next, their daughter Debbie discovers her groom has been keeping a secret which could throw the whole wedding into question…
Three Days in June is a funny, touching, hopeful gem about love, marriage and second chances that you'll fall in love with over the course of 176 pages.
At a taut 80 pages, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard, and pouring forth – and as twinned targets of patriarchy’s ancient urge to disparage, trivialise and demonise such prolific, intimate output.
The Slicks is a heady, rallying and unexpected melding of popular culture and literary criticism – an inspired treatise and unexpected celebration of two iconic female poets by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.
Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this special edition of Murakami’s celebrated short story sees the bewildered Katagiri find meaning in his humdrum life through joining forces with Frog in an effort to save Tokyo from an existential threat.
At 98 pages, this is the perfect pick to add to your daily commute.
From the Booker Prize-winning Julian Barnes, Departure(s) is the story of a man called Stephen and a woman called Jean, who fall in love when they are young and again when they are old. It is the story of an elderly Jack Russell called Jimmy, enviably oblivious to his own mortality.
It begins at the end of life – but it doesn’t end there. Ultimately, it’s about the only things that ever really mattered: how we find happiness in this life, and when it is time to say goodbye. You will leave these 176 pages a changed reader.
