The best short books under 100 pages and quick to read

Author: George Orwell

Pages: 56

Yes, we know you read it at school. We all read it at school. But pick it up again now that you’re a little older, a little wiser, and a little more pissed off at the world’s political failings, and it’ll seem like a whole new and important read to you.

Author: Sun Tzu

Pages: 64

"Been reading that book you told me about. You know, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. I mean here's this guy, a Chinese general, wrote this thing 2400 years ago, and most of it still applies today! Balk the enemy's power. Force him to reveal himself. You know most of the guys that I know, they read Prince Machiavelli, and I had Carmela go and get the Cliff Notes once and he's okay. But this book is much better about strategy." – Tony Soprano, on finding mobster strategy inspiration in this book, in The Sopranos.

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Pages: 99

It’s about an old man. And the sea. And the difficulties in admitting that we cannot control the uncontrollable.

Author: Franz Kafka

Pages: 52

Felt a bit ropey when you woke up, did you? A touch hungover, perhaps? You know who definitely doesn’t care about your AM woes? Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in this, who “woke up one morning from unsettling dreams” to find he’d become a cockroach. Yep, a cockroach. Now take your aspirin, open up what’s often argued to be the finest short story ever written, and quit yo’ self-pitying.

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Pages: 64

Perhaps the most classic tale of good versus evil, and a look into internal battles every man must deal with in life. The idea for this world-famous “shilling shocker” came to Stevenson in a dream, from which he woke in a blind fury and instantly began to write that morning.

Author: Jack London

Pages: 72

A hero to Hemingway and Kerouac, London led a crime-filled youth before knuckling down to write more than 50 books before his drug- and drink-assisted death aged just 40. This, his adventurous tale of a sled dog that’s stolen away from domestic life and hurled into a world of cruelty, is as much about canines as it is about the conflicts in humanity.

Author: James Joyce

Pages: 70

TS Eliot believed this, the final story from Joyce’s Dubliners collection that centres around an epiphany about life and death, to be one of the greatest short stories ever written. Yeah, take his word for it. He knew a thing or two about books, he did.

Author: Margery Williams

Pages: 48

One of the most beautiful children's books ever made, The Velveteen Rabbit is all about a toy who is new to a nursery who wants to understand what being real means. And now we have tears all over our keyboard.

Author: Joseph Conrad

Pages: 80

A book perhaps best summed up by its most famous line, “The horror! The horror!” You’ve seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocolypse Now, right? Yep, all that madness was inspired by this. That should give you a good idea about how totally messed up and dark this work of literary art gets.

Author: Herman Melville

Pages: 58

Melville’s tale of the big white whale is a good ten times the length of this read, and even at a snail’s pace you’ll get through this peculiar and compelling story of one man’s isolation in just an afternoon.

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Pages: 16

A wonderful book that showcases abuse and the mental turbulence it can cause someone. Having had enough, a woman locks herself in her room to get away from her abusive husband and begins to obsess about the yellow wallpaper. This is a book that has myriad interpretations and is one you will want to reread endlessly.

Author: Shirley Jackson

Pages: 16

Shirley Jackson is the master of eerie vibes, and The Lottery is one of her most famous stories. It's incredibly short, only 16 pages, which is why you'll often find it included in short story collections rather than as a standalone book. We're going to warn you in advance this isn't an easy read. It's horrifying in a way that burrows deep into your psyche. But if you like to feel truly shaken by the fiction you read, give The Lottery a whirl.

Author: Fydor Dostoyevsky

Pages: 96

Cracking into Dostoyevsky seems like a daunting prospect. Hell, it is a daunting prospect – his finest work, Crime and Punishment, is very heavy going. This relatively bite-sized book questions our obsession with destruction and chaos, and is a good place to start before committing to the big boy stuff.

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Pages: 32

If ever the was a book that holds a mirror up to the current society we live in, it is this one. Over the course of 32 pages, Le Guin showcases a utopia and the price that is paid to have a city of such splendour. This story has all the power of a boxer's fist to the gut

Author: Henry James

Pages: 78

You’d need serious cojones to read this masterful gothic ghost chiller with the lights off. Serious cojones.

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Pages: 80

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner isn't a novel, it's a very, very long poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. You will find it in e-book and paperback form, though, often accompanied by beautiful illustrations. It tells the story of a sailor who has recently returned from a long sea voyage. It's beautifully-written, eerie and deeply atmospheric. You'll be lingering over the words and unique linguistic style as much as the vivid imagery.

Author: Thomas Mann

Pages: 58

Proof that the Devil really does make work for idle thumbs. An aging author’s escape from writer’s block leads him to Venice, and a world of fateful obsession, uncontrollable infatuation, painful lust, forbidden sex and doom.