A friend and I have really been enjoying short novels recently, and we’re hoping to read more! Anything between 100-250 pages would be great. We’re very open to different genres, here’s a list of what we’ve read and enjoyed recently:
* Pew by Catherine Lacey
* Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
* Foster by Claire Keegan
* Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
* This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
* Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
by am-rain
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Animal farm
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
*The Awakening*
*Ethan Frome*
*Daisy Miller*
Penric’s Demon by Lois Macmaster Bujold. If you like it, there are several sequels. It’s fantasy, but not the dragons and wizards kind.
Weather by Jenny Offill – similar to Pew in its exploration of modern-day religion in US. Anxiety-filled prose, very short and finely tailored.
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy – similar to Our Wives Under the Sea in its deep connection to nature/descriptions of water. Less poetic though, and more straight-forward of a story.
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield – for obvious reasons (excellent short story collection)
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett – short but dense. A good pick if you’re interested in experimental prose and meandering storytelling.
Tor.com publishes a lot of novellas — sadly they don’t have a comprehensive list on their website but here’s a list of 163 on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/tor-novellas
A Short Stay in Hell
Mona by Pola Oloixarac
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich
Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells…Genre: Sci-fi
Shopgirl by Steve Martin
To Be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
It’s a novella about a small space ship crew of citizens (as opposed to professional astronauts) on a mission to scout for alien life. They have to be in suspension for long periods during the journey so they get beamed info from Earth and catch up on hundreds of years of new human history at a time. If you liked Time War I feel like it has a very similar vibe and you’ll probably enjoy it.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Or
Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Or
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
All the Names – Jose Saramago. Silas Marner – George Eliot. Taratuta/Still Life with Pipe – Jose Donoso.
Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire is a lovely standalone novella about a school for kids who can’t readjust to the real world after going to Wonderland/Narnia/Oz etc, and if you like it, there are a bunch of sequels
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Dranger is about siblings and love at different points of Halley’s Comet appearing across centuries. It’s gorgeous and sad and profound and just terrific
The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill is about a teenage girl who is managing caring for her little brother and keeping her mother’s art career afloat until her mother brings home a liver who may or may not be a crane
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka is a short book in five parts, iirc, about a Japanese-American family being forcibly “relocated” to an internment camp during WW2