Short and Sweet
Looking for a quick read that still satisfies? Check out these options under 200 pages. (Created January 2026)
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Orbital
In this moving elegy to our humanity, environment and planet, six astronauts, selected for one of the last space station missions, leave their lives behind to travel at a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour to orbit Earth, witnessing the marks of civilization below. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Season of the Swamp
In this mesmerizing picaresque, Herrera speculates about the 18 months future Mexican president Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans during his exile following a dispute with then-president Santa Anna. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Hunchback
Shaka has a congenital disorder and lives in a care home outside Tokyo, but her mind has no boundaries: She takes e-learning courses and publishes fantasies on websites, and when she offers a ton of money for a sperm donor, her nurse accepts the dare. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Foster
This charming novella from Irish writer Keegan follows a young girl who’s unceremoniously dropped off by her rapscallion father to live on an older couple’s farm in the early 1980s. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Only Smoke
When Carlos turns 18, his mother tells him that his estranged father, who left their home long ago, has recently been killed in a motorbike accident. Carlos inherits his father's book-filled apartment. Beside the bed is a well-worn copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales. Young Carlos picks it up and starts reading at random, finding that he can inhabit the stories he reads as a "ghost," comingling with the characters of the fairy tales. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Touched
Martin Just awakens one Saturday morning from what feels like a years-long sleep with the knowledge that he is one of 107 people destined to stop humanity from destroying all life in existence. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Tusks of Extinction
When her digitized consciousness is downloaded into the mind of a mammoth, which have been resurrected, Dr. Damira Khismatullina, who was brutally murdered trying to defend the world’s last elephants, must teach them how to be mammoths to avoid dooming them to a new extinction. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Automatic Noodle
In this semicozy tale set in a dystopian near future, robots open their own restaurant, build an unusual found family, and achieve personal growth. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted
Okri draws on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for an enchanting story of a masked ball in present-day France. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Haunt Sweet Home
On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality, in a spooky ghost story from a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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