The best short books and novellas under 250 pages

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Short books can be just as profound and moving as a tome, as Chetna Maroo's Booker-winning debut proves. Exploring themes of grief and sisterhood, this debut coming-of-age story packs all the feels into just 176 pages. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash for as long as she can remember. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a brutal training regimen and soon, the game has become her entire world, causing a rift between Gopi and her sisters. But on the court, governed by the rhythms of the sport, she feels alive; the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. This novel beautifully captures the ordinary as we follow a young athlete's struggle to transcend herself. 

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. This opportunity is not without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . . Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful novel has stolen the hearts of readers the world over. Through it, we meet four visitors to the café and ask: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

With Writers & Lovers, Lily King became one of our most acclaimed writers of contemporary fiction. And now, with Five Tuesdays in Winter, she gathers ten of her best short stories. These intimate literary stories tell of a bookseller who is filled with unspoken love for his employee, an abandoned teenage boy nurtured by a pair of housesitting students and a girl whose loss of innocence brings confident power. Romantic, hopeful, raw and occasionally surreal, these stories riff beautifully on the topic of love and romance.

No one is watching Ruth, but she watches everyone and everything. Growing up on the outskirts of a wealthy but threadbare town, on the outer edge of popularity, she doesn’t necessarily understand what she is seeing, but she records the unfurling of her awkward youth, under even more awkward parenting. As they mock, ignore, undermine and discount their daughter, Ruth’s parents present now as damaged, inadequate, even monstrous. All the while the Future comes towards them, steadily, and for some of them, fatally. And the fog of the Past and the abuses committed under it gathers, swirls, settles, and intermittently clears. A short but dazzling book that will immobilize and transfix you.

Beneath the shadow of the Hollywood sign, a mountain lion roams the drought-stricken hills of ‘ellay’, teetering on the edge of a dangerous hunger. This lion, queer and introspective, wrestles with more than just survival in a world shaped by human intrusion. Fascinated by the absurdities and desires of the people below, they confront a profound question: Do they long to consume a human, or to become one? As the lion navigates its identity and isolation, the lines between predator and prey blur, in a thought-provoking exploration of desire, transformation, and the meaning of belonging.

Hidden in a Kyoto back alley, the Kamogawa Diner is no ordinary restaurant. Here, food is more than sustenance; it’s a bridge to the past. In The Restaurant of Lost Recipes, a father-daughter duo take on the role of culinary detectives, reconstructing long-lost dishes based on the faded memories of their customers. Among the patrons is a pop star on the brink of giving up her career, seeking the tempura that marked her fleeting success, and an Olympic hopeful longing for a bento box that once connected him to his estranged father. The Kamogawa Diner revives lost recipes and rekindles forgotten memories. It's a doorway to the past through the miracle of delicious food.

Arriving in San Miguel, Mexico, a destination chosen to help her improve her Spanish, from her native India, young student Bonita is anonymous and acutely aware of the possibility of adventure stretching out ahead of her. But, as she sits in a park, silently watching this unfamiliar world go by, she meets a stranger who swears she knew Bonita’s mother as an art student decades before. This woman’s revelation leads Bonita on a journey to learn the truth of who her mother once was; a journey that will change their relationship for good.

Set on a remote and unforgiving island off the coast of Wales, Whale Fall is the story of Manod, a young woman with dreams of a life different from the one she is destined for. With war on the horizon, a move to the mainland seems unlikely, until two anthropologists arrive to study the island’s unique way of life. Manod hatches a plan to befriend them and secure a passage to a new future. At 224 pages, Elizabeth O’Connor’s haunting and highly anticipated debut novel is a read you can enjoy in one sitting.

In a serene mountain photography studio, nestled between this world and the next, visitors at life’s end awaken to a profound task. Handed a cup of tea, they are asked to select their most treasured memories, captured in photos representing every day of their lives. These chosen moments will be placed in a lantern, which, once spun, will guide them into the afterlife. From a Yakuza remembering a time of kindness to a woman rebuilding a shattered community, their stories reveal the bittersweet beauty of life’s fleeting moments. The Lantern of Lost Memories is a luminous Japanese tale, exploring how we are shaped by the people and moments we hold dear.

Stella Maris is the story of a mathematician, twenty years old, admitted to the hospital with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag and one request: she does not want to talk about her brother. Heralded by the Guardian as ‘one of the greatest American novels of this or any other time’, Stella Maris is the must-read companion novel to The Passenger. Though they can be read separately, together, the two novels tell one grand story of siblings Bobby and Alicia Western. While The Passenger is a little longer, Stella Maris comes in at just 192 pages, making it the perfect short read to curl up with. 

At just 160 pages, what What You Need From the Night lacks in length, is made up for in emotion. Set in a deprived area of France, we meet our protagonist as a lone parent looking after his two teenage sons, Fus and Gilou, after the death of his wife. While Gilou sets his sights on a university in Paris, Fus falls in with the local far-right groupand soon becomes embroiled in violence, forcing his father to reconcile his paternal love with the shame and anger this brings. This is a beautiful and tender exploration of the difficulties of parenting a child who must forge their own path when that path conflicts with everything they have been taught.

Raven Leilani is a funny and original new voice in literary fiction. Her razor-sharp yet surprisingly tender debut is an essential novel about what it means to be young now. Edie is messing up her life, and no one seems to care. Then she meets Eric, who is white, middle-aged and comes with a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. And as if life wasn’t hard enough, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s family. 

On a train crossing the forest, a Jewish father holds his twin children. His wife no longer has enough milk to feed them. In hopes of saving both their lives, he wraps his daughter in a shawl and gently throws her from the train. Elsewhere in the enormous forest lives a young woman, who prays each night for a baby until one day, she finds a small bundle. Set against the horrors of the Holocaust and told with a fairytale-like lyricism, The Most Precious of Cargoes, is a deeply moving fable about family and redemption that is simply not to be missed.

Freelancer proofreader Fuyuko is shy and solitary. About to turn thirty-five, she is haunted by her past encounters, and is unable to even imagine a successful relationship. But she has one friend, Hijiri, and she loves the light. On Christmas Eve, the night of her birthday, Fuyuko leaves her home to count the lights, and an encounter with physics teacher Mr. Mitsutsuka opens up another dimension. Poetic, pulsing and unexpected, this is the third novel by internationally bestselling writer Mieko Kawakami.

A New York Times bestseller, Of Women and Salt tells the story of five generations of fierce Latina women, linked by blood and circumstance. From nineteenth-century cigar factories to present-day detention centres, this novel is a haunting meditation on the choices of mothers and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their truth despite those who wish to silence them. 

Translated by Louise Heal Kawai

This international bestseller is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others, and the tremendous power of books (even short ones). After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated. It seems he will have to close Natsuki Books, the tiny second-hand bookshop his grandfather owned which has long been Rintaro's safe haven. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. Together, they embark on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. 

This devastating novel from the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall is set over twenty-four hours as the guests of a faded Scottish cabin park wait out the rain on the longest day of the year. With little else to do, twelve people sit cooped up with their families, watching the other residents. Slowly, one family, a mother and daughter without the right clothes or the right manners, begin to draw attention and tensions begin to rise as tragedy looms. Summerwater is a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty and a literary must-read in these divided times.

This novella from one of America’s greatest literary fiction writers, Don DeLillo, is an illuminating and essential guide to our navigation of a bewildering world. Set on Super Bowl Sunday 2022, this compelling novel about what happens when an unpredictable crisis strikes is a profoundly moving examination of what makes us human. A retired physics professor and her husband are hosting a dinner party. One of her former students has already arrived, but another couple has been delayed by a dramatic flight from Paris. As they wait for kick-off, something happens that severs the digital connections in all our lives.

Juliette takes the métro to the job she hates each morning, her only escape the books she reads on her journey. But one day she gets off a few stops early, and meetds Soliman – the owner of the most enchanting bookshop Juliette has ever seen. And this encounter will change her life forever, because Soliman also believes in the power of books, and he has the perfect job for Juliette . . .  

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds. 

First published in 1943, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been translated into more than 250 languages, becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's short novel tells the story of a pilot stranded in the Sahara and his strange encounter with a young boy from another world, whose curiosity takes them on their journey together. Soon the pilot is able to piece together an understanding of the tiny planet from which the prince has come and of his incredible travels across the universe.

A book that surely needs little introduction, this is one of Fitzgerald’s greatest works, capturing the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America's Jazz Age. Jay Gatsby lives mysteriously in a Long Island mansion, and while people clamour for invitations to his lavish parties, no one seems to know him or how he became so rich. But Jay Gatsby cares for one person alone - Daisy Buchanan, the woman he has waited for all his life. Little does he know that his infatuation will lead to tragedy and end in murder.

First published in 1973, Toni Morrison's Sula is an essential book in the formation of black feminist literary criticism, tackling themes of womanhood, race, slavery and love. Having grown up together in a poor but close-knit community, Nel and Sula are inseparable, until adulthood takes them on different paths. Nel stays in town to raise a family, but Sula escapes to the progressive ideals of the big city. When Sula returns ten years later, the two friends must confront their differences and an awful secret they shared as children. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began life as a Radio 4 show in 1978 and has since spawned adaptations across almost every format, making it a staple on every respectable list of the best sci-fi books. Following the galactic adventures of Arthur Dent after his house's untimely demolition to make way for a new hyperspace express route, this new edition of 'the Guide' features exclusive bonus archive material and a new introduction from Russell T. Davies.

Leah is back from a perilous and troubling deep-sea mission, and Miri is delighted to have her wife home. To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normality, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Leah has carried the trauma of events that took place on the ocean floor into the couple's domestic life, and Miri soon realizes that the life that they once knew, might be gone. The debut novel from the author of acclaimed short story collection salt slow, Our Wives Under The Sea is a rich meditation on love, loss and the mysteries of the ocean.

In this prize-winning, internationally bestselling short novel, a mother lets her thirty-something daughter – Green – move into her apartment, with dreams that she will find a good job and a good husband to start a family with. But when Green arrives with her girlfriend Lane, her mother finds it hard to be civil. Yet Green's mother has her own moral battle to fight when the care home where she works insists that she lower her standard of care for an elderly dementia patient who chose not to lead a conventional life, and she finds herself asking the question: why should not having chosen a traditional life mean that your life is worth nothing at all? Translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, this is a universal tale about ageing, prejudice and love.

Actor Olof Sten makes no secret of being married, but when meets Ester Nilsson, she falls madly in love with him. As they start to meet regularly and begin to conduct a strange dance of courtship, Olof insists he doesn't plan to leave his wife, but he doesn't object to this new situation either . . . it’s far too much fun. Ester, on the other hand, is convinced that things might change. To read Acts of Infidelity is to dive inside the mind of a brilliant, infuriating friend. Cutting, often cruel, and written with razor-sharp humour, Acts of Infidelity is painful, maddening, but most of all perfectly, precisely true.

On a perfect June morning, Clarissa Dalloway sets off to buy flowers for the party she will host that evening. She is preoccupied with thoughts of the present and memories of the past, and from her interior monologue emerge the people who have touched her life. On the same day, Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked survivor of the Great War, commits suicide, and casual mention of his death at the party provokes in Clarissa thoughts of her own isolation. Bold and experimental, Virginia Woolf's story of one day in the lives of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith is a landmark in twentieth-century fiction. 

This lyrical and moving account takes us back to the early history of the earth, a wildly inhospitable place with swirling seas, constant volcanic eruptions and an unstable atmosphere. The triumph of life as it emerges, survives and evolves in this hostile setting is Henry Gee's riveting subject: he traces the story of life on earth from its turbulent beginnings to the emergence of early hominids and the miracle of the first creatures to fly. You'll never look at our planet in the same way again.

In Scary Smart, The former chief business officer of Google outlines how artificial intelligence is predicted to be a billion times more intelligent than humans by 2049. Free from distractions and working at incredible speeds, AI can look into the future and make informed predictions, looking around corners both real and virtual. But AI also gets so much wrong. Mo Gawdat, drawing on his unparalleled expertise in the field, outlines how and why we must alter the terrifying trajectory of AI development and teach ourselves and our machines to live better. 

In seven short essays about that big grey blob between your ears, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explores the origins and structure of the brain, as well as shelving popular myths about the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or between nature and nurture. Sure to intrigue casual readers and scientific veterans alike, the book is full of surprises, humour and revelations about human nature.

Mary Seacole was a fiercely independent self-funded entrepreneur from Jamaica. A trained nurse, she was desperate to offer help during the Crimean War, but was denied work by officials and by Florence Nightingale. Mary knew what she wanted to achieve and wouldn’t let anything stand in her way, so she set up her famous hotel for British soldiers, offering respite from the front line. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands is her gutsy autobiography.

This heartbreaking yet hopeful memoir shows us how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times. In November 1938, Eddie Jaku was beaten, arrested and taken to a German concentration camp. He endured unimaginable horrors for the next seven years and lost family, friends and his country.  But he survived. And because he survived, he vowed to smile every day. He went on to believe himself to be the ‘happiest man on earth’. This is his story.