24 Incredible Books You Can Read in a Day

One Sitting Wonders, enjoy our selection of these wonderful short Books you can Read In a Day.

24 Incredible Books You Can Read in a Day

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the story of Changez, a young, Princeton-educated Pakistani who goes on to work at a prestigious financial analysis firm in New York City and falls in love with a woman from the upper echelons of New York society. He seems to have achieved the American dream–until 9/11 devastates the city. As the woman and city he loves suffer from new wounds and old scars, Changez finds that his place in society had shifted. With the world seemingly crumbling in front of him, he must decide where his true loyalties lie–with his adopted country or his homeland.

The Metamorphosis by Frans Kafka

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis.

It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing–though absurdly comic–meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation.

Poonachi by Perumal Murugan

Through a seeming act of providence, an old couple receives a day-old female goat kid as a gift from a mysterious traveler.

Masterly and nuanced, Perumal Murugan’s tale forces us reflect on our own responses to hierarchy and ownership, selflessness and appetite, love and desire, living and dying. Poonachi is the story of a goat who carries the burden of being different all her life, of a she-goat who survives against the odds.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

With the excitement of a perfectly executed thriller and the force of a parable, The Stranger is the work of one of the most engaged and intellectually alert writers of the past century.

Albert Camus’s spare, laconic masterpiece about a murder in Algeria is famous for having diagnosed, with an almost scientific clarity, that condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.

Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan

Kurniawan’s novel blends epic narrative with magical realism. This brief tale gives a fascinating insight into rural Indonesian life.

In a small Indonesian town, the residents are astonished when a usually quiet Margio kills a man named Anwar Sadat. The town’s commander doesn’t buy the story, but Margio confesses to the deed. According to him, a ghostly tiger living inside his body is the culprit.

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city’s crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at a branch of ‘Smile Mart,’ she finds peace and purpose in her life.

Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

The year is 1962. Florence, the daughter of a successful businessman and an aloof Oxford academic, is a talented violinist. She dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, the earnest young history student she met by chance and who unexpectedly wooed her and won her heart.

On Chesil Beach is an extraordinary novel that brilliantly, movingly shows us how the entire course of a life can be changed—by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alekandr Solzhenitsyn

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives.

The Employees by Olga Ravn

The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare. Aboard the interstellar Six Thousand Ship, the human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos.

When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. In chilling, crackling, and exhilarating prose, The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.

The White Book by Han Kang

The White Book is a meditation on color, beginning with a list of white things. It is a book about mourning, rebirth and the tenacity of the human spirit. It is a stunning investigation of the fragility, beauty and strangeness of life.

Pierre et Jean by Guy de Maupassant

Pierre et Jean was written by Guy de Maupassant in 1887. It tells the story of a middle-class French family whose lives are changed when a deceased family friend, leaves his inheritance to Jean. This provokes Pierre to doubt the fidelity of his mother and the legitimacy of his brother.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

A beautiful and moving novel about grief, sisterhood and a teenage girl’s struggle to transcend herself.

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

Fludd by Hilary Mantel

Mantel’s slim, intense novel displays the author’s formidable gift for illuminating the darker side of the human heart, offering metaphoric and literal incarnations of the powerful central images of Catholicism.

Father Angwin, the parish priest, has lost his faith, thinks the town tobacconist is the devil and fears the threat of a youthful replacement for his post. When a rain-soaked man named Fludd arrives on a stormy night, Angwin assumes it is the newly appointed curate.

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

This is a mesmerizing portrayal of the ties that divide and bond an ordinary group of middle-class Londoners on vacation in the south of France. Each is gravely marked by their past, as each struggles to build a livable life in a social environment that gives little comfort or support under its mask of sunshine, beaches, and holiday manners.

At one level suspenseful and amusing with an atmospheric setting and interesting characters, and at the same time filmic and almost dreamlike as she examines the roots of mental illness.

The Time Machine by H.G Wells

The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time.

In the story a British inventor creates a time machine that sends him far into the future, A.D. 802,701, where subterranean Morlocks prey on the childlike Eloi.

We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

Henry Chinaski is a lowlife loser with a hand-to-mouth existence. His menial post office day job supports a life of beer, one-night stands and racetracks. Lurid, uncompromising and hilarious, Post Office is a landmark in American literature.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

Yuri Herrera’s short novella focuses on the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it.

Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages – one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is perhaps the crowning achievement of Shirley Jackson’s brilliant career: a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the dramatic struggle that ensues when an unexpected visitor interrupts their unusual way of life.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.

Sula by Toni Morrison

This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio.

Nel and Sula’s devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two migrant ranch workers in Salinas, California. Published in 1937 and set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Of Mice and Men explores the themes of loneliness and isolation. In a time when every man is for himself to survive, George and Lennie travel together and take responsibility for each other. They are seeking their version of the American Dream, to own a farm together.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.

A lyrical tale about loss and grief and familial love. When college student Mikage Sakurai is orphaned by the death of her grandmother, she is rescued from loneliness and grief by Yuichi, a young flower shop delivery man, and discovers that families come in many shapes . . . and can be found in many places.

If you enjoyed our selection of 24 Incredible Books you can Read in a Day, check out our picks for the Best Short Story Authors to read.