15 Fast-Paced Books To Read In 2024
It’s exciting to get lost in the pages of a fascinating memoir, a heartfelt romance, or a gripping thriller that simply won’t let our attention go until the true killer is revealed.
With the long Bank Holiday weekend in touching distance, there’s no better time to sit back and relax with a pacy read. These books will have you turning the pages faster than you can eat an entire packet of mini eggs in one sitting. From moving memoirs to heartbreaking romances, here are 15 fast-paced reads you can finish in a day.
1. Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle
This short story collection clocks in at 192 pages. It’s penned by the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. While the book centers on loss and struggle, there are plenty of laughs and inspiring moments too in tales of emotionally drained nurses, a middle-aged man unable to attend his mom’s funeral, and the unforgettable Alan, a “sixty-two-year old bachelor. With a wife,” in Newcastle, England, in the title story “Life Without Children.”
2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The entirety of Woolf’s seminal novel reads more like a series of oil paintings. The reader feels as though they are perpetually perched on a windowsill, looking in on the lives of the Ramsay family at their holiday home in the Isle of Skye through each sunrise and sunset. While visitors come and go, we remain captivated — watching over the ancestral house surrounded by sea and sky, learning of the intricate inner workings of family life.
3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
You didn’t think you’d make it through this list of books without this one, now did you? Good. So let’s share our position loud and clear: If you haven’t read this 1952 classic already, do it now. And if you’ve read it before, it’s high time to read it again.
An inimitable novella about an older fisherman and his sojourns at sea, you can easily read this book in one sitting — and be better for it. P.S. If you can make it through these 128 pages without shedding a tear, we’re impressed.
4. Naked at the Knife-Edge by Vivian James Rigney
It may only be 192 pages, but you’ll be taken on quite the adventure as you follow along on Rigney’s journey to make it to the summit of Everest. Here, the leadership expert and executive coach shares unique learnings from the experience along with hard-won lessons on success and its very definition. If you liked Into Thin Air and How to Win Friends and Influence People, this March 2022 release is for you.
5. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx Talk, this essay in novel form is a unique definition of feminism in the 21st century, calling for inclusion amongst women using personal experience to demonstrate why we should all be feminists. Adichie’s writing is smart and rousing — a sharp look at the gender hierarchy we’ve created and a call to engage in necessary solutions.
6. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
We Were Liars is the type of fast-paced thriller where you have no idea what you’re looking for until the twist smacks you in the face. It takes place amongst wealthy and seemingly perfect families on Martha’s Vineyard.
During the summer she turns 15, Cadence struggles with memory loss from a head injury. Her mother sends her on trip with her father around Europe, rather than with all her cousins on the island as they usually spend every summer. After two summers away from the island, Cadence returns to find so much has changed, and no one will answer all her questions. This story unravels quickly, with lies and secrets nearly pouring out of every page.
7. Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Published in paperback in January 2024, Cecile Pin’s debut novel has already been met with rave reviews. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023, this heart-breaking piece of contemporary literature begins just after the last American troops leave Vietnam.
A trio of siblings, separated from the rest of their family and utterly alone in the world, navigate a series of perilous journeys which see them take refuge in camps and resettlement centres until they find themselves in Thatcher-era Britain.
In a poignant, sweeping narrative that oscillates between the world of the living and the dead, this haunting story nevertheless tells the tale of unmoored Vietnamese children in the UK with an emphasis on heritage and hope.
8. The Defining Decade by Dr. Meg Jay
Dr. Meg Jay is a psychologist who drew from nearly 20 years of work to demonstrate that our 20s are not a second adolescence, but the most defining decade of adulthood. This book argues that our 20s are not to be trivialized, that we change and develop rapidly because of our jobs, relationships, social networks, and evolving identities. In her book, Dr. Jay takes many of the complaints about life in our 20s and offers practical guides to make the most of the 10 years that may define the rest of our lives.
9. A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin
Originally published in 1951, this slim volume of 117 pages chronicles the author’s strolls through New York City during his childhood. Kazin grew up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s evocative, melodic, and a potent reminder that every generation undergoes strife.
10. I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
In America, white society has fallen in love with the idea of “diversity” but forgotten what it means to not only “allow” differences but celebrate what makes people diverse. Austin Channing Brown uses her own life — even her own name — to demonstrate that this world only permits diversity when it doesn’t make white people uncomfortable. This is her journey to celebrating Blackness, but also a call to genuinely value Black people by addressing racial hostility in our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
11. Takaya: Lone Wolf by Cheryl Alexander
In 192 pages, Alexander draws you in to the captivating world of a solitary, island-dwelling wolf in British Columbia’s Salish Sea, with incredible photography, journal entries, and interviews. You’ll never look at wild animals the same way after completing this stellar 2020 tome from Rocky Mountain Books.
12. Elevation by Stephen King
Known for his long and horrifying novels, Stephen King manages to pack his signature creepy storytelling into his second-shortest novel, Elevation.
In the town of Castle Rock, Scott Carey has been steadily losing weight (and experiencing a couple of other odd things) but doesn’t want to be poked and prodded by doctors. He’s also engaged in a mini-battle with his neighbors — a lesbian couple whose dog keeps pooping on his lawn.
As Scott begins to understand the prejudice the women face, an alliance forms. This is a refreshing and reinvigorating novel, one that draws you in with Stephen King’s style and keeps you hooked with his signature twists.
13. Layla by Colleen Hoover
When an unexpected attack lands Layla in the hospital, she’s fortunately able to physically recover — but is left with emotional and mental trauma. Leeds, her partner, is struggling to reconnect with the woman he fell in love with, but has an idea to reignite their relationship with Layla by escaping to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Their trip takes an unexpected turn when Layla proves unpredictable and Leeds finds solace in another guest with a curious set of problems. Colleen Hoover novels are notorious single-sitting reads — the tension is so high that you can’t possibly put it down until everything is resolved.
14. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
This quick read follows Xiomara, who feels unheard in her Harlem neighborhood and finds slam poetry as a way to understand her mother and her place in the world. While Xiomara is used to using her fists to communicate, she finds she has much more to say, and getting her words out proves powerful and therapeutic. I strongly recommend listening to this as an audiobook, as the cadence of the poetry read by the author is unparalleled in power and emotion.
15. Dear Martin by Nic Stone
This book and its sequel, Dear Justyce, are both super short reads, so even if you have to take a few breaks, you can still read them in a day. The first installment is about Justyce McAllister, a future Ivy League student who was recently put in handcuffs and is now being treated differently by his classmates and teachers, all before a horrible incident changes his life.
To deal with it all, he turns to the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. and starts writing letters to him. The book deals with police brutality and racism in a way that’s deeply revealing about the disproportionate weight Black youth carry in America.
