Short Reads
Powerful classics you can finish in a sitting — essays, novellas and concise masterpieces.
66 books, free to read in full.
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
✦Big ideas · 1h 54m
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen
✦Big ideas · 1h 46m
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
✦Big ideas · 1h 8m
A Study in Scarlet
Arthur Conan Doyle
✦Big ideas · 2h 53m
Aesop's Fables
Aesop
✦Big ideas · 2h 45m
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
✦Big ideas · 1h 45m
Andersen's Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Andersen
✦Big ideas · 3h 41m
Anthem
Ayn Rand
✦Big ideas · 1h 16m
Beowulf
Anonymous
✦Big ideas · 2h 28m
Black Beauty
Anna Sewell
✦Big ideas · 3h 58m
Candide
Voltaire
✦Big ideas · 2h 20m
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
✦Big ideas · 1h 28m
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell
✦Big ideas · 4h 42m
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
✦Big ideas · 2h 23m
Discourse on the Method
René Descartes
✦Big ideas · 1h 31m
Dubliners
James Joyce
✦Big ideas · 4h 30m
Essays
Ralph Waldo Emerson
✦Big ideas · 4h 30m
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
✦Big ideas · 2h 17m
Flatland
Edwin A. Abbott
✦Big ideas · 2h 15m
From the Earth to the Moon
Jules Verne
✦Big ideas · 6h
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
✦Big ideas · 2h 32m
King Lear
William Shakespeare
✦Big ideas · 1h 49m
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
✦Big ideas · 1h 11m
Master and Man
Leo Tolstoy
✦Big ideas · 1h 17m
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
✦Big ideas · 2h 42m
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky
✦Big ideas · 2h 56m
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
✦Big ideas · 3h 11m
On the Happy Life
Seneca
✦Big ideas · 52 min
On the Shortness of Life
Seneca
✦Big ideas · 44 min
Othello
William Shakespeare
✦Big ideas · 1h 50m
Peter Pan
J. M. Barrie
✦Big ideas · 3h 8m
Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw
✦Big ideas · 2h 14m
Silas Marner
George Eliot
✦Big ideas · 4h 43m
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
✦Big ideas · 1h 42m
Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu
✦Big ideas · 43 min
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
✦Big ideas · 6h 57m
The Analects of Confucius
Confucius
✦Big ideas · 1h 57m
The Art of War
Sun Tzu
✦Big ideas · 3h 36m
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
✦Big ideas · 4h 58m
The Bhagavad Gita
Vyasa
✦Big ideas · 1h 16m
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
✦Big ideas · 2h 7m
The Cherry Orchard and Other Plays
Anton Chekhov
✦Big ideas · 2h 57m
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
✦Big ideas · 45 min
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
✦Big ideas · 1h 22m
The Invisible Man
H.G. Wells
✦Big ideas · 3h 13m
The Island of Doctor Moreau
H.G. Wells
✦Big ideas · 2h 53m
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
✦Big ideas · 1h 28m
The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope
✦Big ideas · 3h 34m
The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
✦Big ideas · 2h 50m
The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran
✦Big ideas · 50 min
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
✦Big ideas · 3h 4m
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám
✦Big ideas · 45 min
The Sign of the Four
Arthur Conan Doyle
✦Big ideas · 2h 52m
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
✦Big ideas · 2h 58m
The Symposium
Plato
✦Big ideas · 2h 10m
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter
✦Big ideas · 4 min
The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan
✦Big ideas · 2h 43m
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
✦Big ideas · 2h 9m
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
✦Big ideas · 2h 48m
The Warden
Anthony Trollope
✦Big ideas · 4h 47m
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
✦Big ideas · 3h 53m
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum
✦Big ideas · 2h 36m
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
✦Big ideas · 24 min
Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
✦Big ideas · 1h 58m
Utopia
Thomas More
✦Big ideas · 2h 54m
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
✦Big ideas · 7h 43m