Looking to get a headstart on your 2026 reading goals? Or just want to ease back into reading with a short story? This is the list for you.
A quick read can feel like a quick win – it helps to put your reading momentum on the right track.
On this list we’ve picked out some of the best books in the Library that are 200 pages or less. As we begin the National Year of Reading, these bitesize stories are a great way to start off strong.
1. Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan [book]
116 pages
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season.
As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
2. Orbital – Samantha Harvey [book]
136 pages
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the Earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe.
Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it.
3. A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers [book]
147 pages
It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honour the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of 'what do people need?' is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They're going to need to ask it a lot.
4. Foster – Claire Keegan [book]
89 pages
Claire Keegan may be the queen of short fiction with her small yet impactful stories, making the list again with our shortest pick.
A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house she finds affection she has not known before, and slowly she begins to blossom in their care. But when a secret is suddenly revealed, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.
5. Make Your Bed – William H. McRaven [book]
130 pages
If non-fiction is more your speed, start the year with this pocket-sized motivational read.
Struggling to find structure? Finding yourself lacking motivation? Start by making your bed. Maintaining routine and structure is more important than ever in the age of home working, flexitime and the general chaos of life.
In Make Your Bed, Admiral William H. McRaven shares 10 life lessons he learned during his Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his long Naval career, but also throughout his life
6. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly - Sun-mi Hwang [book]
134 pages
This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild and to hatch an egg of her own.
A tale of motherhood, sacrifice, and bravery.
7. This is How you Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar [book]
198 pages
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions.
Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
8. We have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson [book]
176 pages
Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night.
Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the hostility of the villagers.
9. Tin Man – Sarah Winman [book]
197 pages
This novel begins with a painting won in a raffle: 15 sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things.
And then there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable. And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives, and it changes nothing and everything.
10. The Bloody Chamber and other stories – Angela Carter [book]
125 pages
A short story anthology containing gothic retellings of fairytale classics.
Angela Carter has taken old fairy stories, subtly altering and changing them to create strange glittering tales that will haunt the reader.
11. Weather – Jenny Offill [book]
207 pages
Okay, so this is cheating, because it comes in at *just* over 200 pages - but we couldn’t resist including this book when the main character is a librarian!
Lizzie Benson, a part-time librarian, is already overwhelmed with the crises of daily life when an old mentor offers her a job answering mail from the listeners of her apocalyptic podcast, 'Hell and High Water'.
Soon questions begin pouring in from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of Western civilization. Entering this polarized world, Lizzie is forced to consider who she is and what she can do to help - as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, and as a citizen of this doomed planet.
