Book Fiction Novels & Stories

A half-smoked cigarette dangled between my fingers, the glow between my curled, stiff fingers the only warmth in the dimly lit sala. I took another long drag, letting the smoke sear into my lungs before slowly blowing it out. My head was a battle zone, images of deception flashing like gunfire: Victor and his sneer, poisoned wine, and the audacity of men who believed they were more clever than me—better or more worthy of what I’d earned in blood and steel. The business world was a more deadly version of an unloaded pistol with the safety off. Deals sealed with a handshake could explode like grenades. Survival was more than just pulling a trigger; it meant knowing when to pull it, who to aim

French toast, strawberry chops and turkey slices. And a can of coke. Unusual! "Something like what?" He asked, leaning back. "urrrrgh," I scanned the room until my eyes fell on the bookrack in front of me. "This!" I pull out one of the novels. “Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough,” he said immediately, without even glancing at it. He could tell which of the books were missing by just looking at the rest on the rack. “You read it?” There's suspicion in his tone.

Her breath, even and unhurried. She passed a bookstore. The same one she’d power-walked past every morning for a year, late to a standup, coffee sloshing, brain already compiling the day’s failure modes. Today she stopped. She went inside. The air smelled like paper and dust and time. She bought a novel she’d seen months ago and never had time for. Six hundred and twelve pages. No table of contents. No appendix on scaling Kubernetes. The cover was a deep, useless blue. The synopsis mentioned a lighthouse. She didn’t even read the whole thing.

Thousands of abandoned books rested upon the silent sand. Some were half-buried. Others lay open, their pages completely blank. The woman whispered, "These are all unfinished stories..." The First Reader nodded. "Every story abandoned by its Author eventually arrives here." Adrian stepped onto the cold sand. The moment his foot touched the shore... every abandoned book trembled. One by one... their pages began turning. Not by wind. By recognition. A faint whisper rose from every direction. "Author..." "Please..." "Finish us..." Thousands of voices.

I asked, raising an eyebrow as we got out. He shrugged, a small smirk tugging at his lips. “You like reading. Figured we could waste some time.” We went inside, and the bell above the door gave a soft jingle. It smelled like old paper and coffee. The kind of place where time moved slower. Nico didn’t hover or try to buy the whole store to impress me. He just wandered the aisles with me, picking up random books, flipping through pages, putting them back. I found myself in the fiction section, running my fingers along the spines. Nico came up behind me, close but not pushing. He reached past me and pulled out a worn copy of some mystery novel.

She did the same for him. One evening, as they walked through the city, Grace noticed a small bookstore she had never seen before. They went in on impulse. The space was narrow, warm, filled with the smell of paper and dust. Grace wandered the aisles slowly. She picked up a novel, then another. She realized she had not read fiction in months. Everything she consumed had been functional. Informational. Necessary. She chose a book without overthinking it. At home later, she read until midnight. The story was ordinary, human, unresolved. She loved it. When she closed the book, she felt something shift. She was no longer only responding to the world. She was engaging with it for pleasure again.

The air inside is rich with the smell of aged books, coffee, and cookie scented candles. “Hi, what exactly is this place? Is it a bookshop or library of some sort?” I asked the receptionist and she flashed me a warm smile. “Welcome to the Fiction Nook, ma'am. We like to call this place our sanctuary for imagination because it is a gem for book lovers which contains well-loved novels and rare first editions. Please come with me. I will give you a tour of the place.” She informed me and walked slowly in front of me.

He shook her from his mind and pushed open the doors to the study. The rug-lined room was bigger than B’s above-garage apartment. Floor to ceiling bookshelves dampened any noise B might made in his whiskey search. There didn’t seem to be a single inch of space on any one of the shelves. Books of all colors, textures, and sizes were packed together. In front of the book spines sat hundreds of little treasures–seashells, pocket watches, glass figurines, and carvings of creatures. So many creatures. B let his fingers drift over the book spines: The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Catcher in the Rye. The Odyssey. Brave New World. The Call of the Wild. White Noise. So many stories he’d never read and

She had never heard of it or even speculated. Her lady wasn't lying when she told Sarah about it. She thought it was not a mere inducement, but a fact she had kept secret for a long time. About how this world actually was inside a book that Fuschia had read. That every human being is a fictional character in this book.

“What’s your hobby?” “Do I have one?” I raised a question. “Well, everyone does. You must have something you truly enjoy doing,” “Hmmm… reading?” My brows creased. “Yes. That must be it. I love reading,” “What type of books are you into? Fiction? Nonfiction? Magazines? BL…” “Fiction,” I asserted, cutting him short. “Especially romance. It helps me live in the world I could only desire to live in with Jeremy. The kind of love and affection I crave exists only in fiction,”