90 Minute Book Novels & Stories

Julian Blackwood. He stood just within the doorway, silent and imposing as a statue carved in marble. The soft yellow glow of the bookstore warmth mingled against sharply defined edges on his impeccably tailored charcoal coat. His topcoat spread only a quarter-inch behind him, a hint of movement, but all else was unyielding. Guarded. Frosty. Lena's hands froze over the cover of a book. Her breath was caught, though, only for a moment. Then she smiled routinely—the kind she'd practiced years earlier.

“What part of ‘It is none of your business’ don’t you understand woman?” “Okay, okay… I won’t go in there. Damn you are so cold, this 90 days thng feels like 90 months to me. Hell, feels like 90 years. How did I end up here? I swear I’ll die or kill someone before the 90 days are over.” She huffed, rolling over onto her side. For a blessed moment, there was silence. But just as I began to relax, her voice returned again, softer but still persistent.

Through the frosted glass, I caught glimpses of her wiping her face. I knew she was waiting for me to go after her, but I wouldn’t. Not anymore. I had finally learned to stop looking back. I booked the earliest flight I could find. By five in the morning, I was already at the airport. Standing at the check-in counter with my suitcase, I nodded along as the attendant went over the luggage policy. Everything felt like a dream. We shared seven years together, and in the end, all I had left was a twenty-eight-inch suitcase.

Three years passed. My work at the closed medical research program in Zurich had finally ended. No contact with the outside world was allowed during the project. That was Professor Luciano's rule, but it was also my choice. I needed a place to hide, to shut out everything connected to the Vitale family. The day the project ended, I received the first letter from outside in three years. It was from Professor Luciano. He wrote that his health was failing and he might not make it through the winter. He wanted to see me one last time.

He knew it was eleven minutes because he checked the time when he sat down and checked it once more because he was who he was, and the interval between the two checks was eleven minutes, which was the length of a board call that wasn't going well and also the length of his shortest recent morning briefing and also, it turned out, the length of time it took him to drink a third of a very good Malbec. Eleven minutes was not a long time. In the normal course of his life, eleven minutes passed without his noticing—the interval between one meeting and the next, the time it took to review a document, the duration of a phone call that he would forget as soon as he hung up. Eleven minutes was nothin

After Melody cheated and returned to the family, I started posting online every day. [Is cheating addictive?] [Just how thrilling is cheating, really?] [When a woman cheats, does she feel worse for her kids or her lover?] … I tagged her school in every post, making sure each one appeared right in front of her students, her colleagues, and even her lover. Everyone told me to stop making such an ugly scene and be the bigger person. Only Melody stood up for me. "I'm the one who did something wrong. It's only fair to let Tony vent a little." That lasted until my 99th post. Then Melody stormed in as if she'd lost her mind and smashed my computer. "Anthony, are you ever going to stop? I alr

Ninety days. She read the letter twice, folded it precisely along its original creases, and put it in the drawer of her bedside table where she kept the things that required dealing with when she had the mental space to deal with them. Then she went to her afternoon shift at the restaurant and carried plates for five hours and smiled at people and refilled water glasses and thought about ninety days the whole time, the number sitting in her chest like a stone she'd swallowed and couldn't feel the edges of anymore, just the weight. ---

More, if you count from the lecture hall. The third book is the longest of the three: four hundred and twelve pages, which is forty-one more than she expected and exactly as many as it needed. The final chapter took a year. Not because the writing was slow but because the argument required one more thing to be understood before it could be said, and the understanding arrived in January and she spent four months finding the language for it. The title is: The Practice the Research Earned: On the Relationship Between the Life You Did Not Choose and the Life You Build.

I pulled out the book that I needed and huffed when I felt the sudden weight of it in my arms. I placed the book back on my table, but the stupid book made a loud noise on the desk, and I winced in embarrassment. Thankfully nobody paid any attention to me. I spread out all my books and started engaging myself with the work for the next two hours. ----- I looked at my watch to see that I still had forty-five minutes left before the bust that I usually went in would make an appearance. I had finished most of the things that I was supposed to do for the day. I stretched myself out on the chair, my back hurting from bending over my books for so long.

I turn around once again so I can look at him, "How long have I been here now?" He raises his right arm that has a simple wristwatch wrapped around it, and checks the time on it. He puts his hand down and resumes flipping the pages on the book. "Only four minutes." he answers my question. My mouth drops and I'm almost tempted to scream. I refrain from doing so and sink further into the stupid chair I'm on. This is going to be a freaking long detention.