In anticipation of the publication of my novella, American Moon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the form. Novellas are tiny in the world of books, but they’re good for readers in a self-inflicted time-squeezed age. We all know that attention spans have shriveled in this era of social media and instant gratification. So, when could be a better time for the novella—a literary genre that found its most popular footing during the Italian Renaissance (14th century)—to reemerge with gusto?

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As a former broadcast journalist, tight storytelling has been in my writing wheelhouse. Brevity with weight was my sweet spot. And so, through this experience, I have found writing novellas far better suited to my own narrative approach. For me, the traditional novel, many times, is often just too much of a load to carry. And sometimes, the novel, certainly that big 400-page tome, can be overwhelming, daunting, and time-sucking for today’s reader.

Enter the novella. What reader wouldn’t want to set aside just a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon to sink themselves into a good story with time leftover to get to the gym, to do laundry, to make dinner?

There have always been short books, some traditionally noted as novellas (20,000-40,000 words), yet not marketed as such. Publishing houses have traditionally seen the novella as an outsider, a stepchild to the real book—the novel. But that appears to be changing. And as an author with two novellas currently out in the world—The Islander (Outpost19) and Sandman (Collective Ink Fiction)—and another on the way, I couldn’t be more thrilled, and readers should be, too.

It’s time to embrace the kind of story that can hold its own literary weight while respecting that you still have a full life to attend to. I urge you to pick up one or more of these modern-day novellas, fall into your favorite chair, and believe in the power of brevity.

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Echoland by Per Petterson (160 pages)

This coming-of-age story centers on a boy’s summer trip to Denmark with his broken and grieving family, a small book focusing on just a few days but covering big emotions. The protagonist, a boy named Arvid, wrestles with suspicions about his family dynamic and the impossible task of dealing with a sorrow that is left unspoken. The story delivers tender and tragic daggers to the heart through a series of unsettling encounters that expose the awkwardness of puberty. I particularly love Petterson’s ability to turn the landscape into a character that, for all intents and purposes, interacts with a young boy’s trauma.

Foster by Claire Keagan (90 pages)

I always believed that Keegan’s mastery comes through what she leaves out of her story—the unsaid, the unrevealed, the inner life. Foster—so short it is sometimes referred to as a short story but has also been published as a standalone novella—is narrated by a young Irish girl, achingly quiet and shy. Her troubled and impoverished family sends her to another family’s farm so the girl’s overwhelmed mother can give birth to yet another child. Family secrets come along with her to her temporary home, as the family struggles with unimaginable grief. Heartbreak is unexpressed, kindness is offered through subtle action, and love emerges at the edges of family pain.

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt (65 pages)

DeWitt’s narrator is a teenage girl whose demanding mother insists on proper upper-class behavior, befitting a young, wealthy Englishwoman. One of those “behaviors” is how to live a fashionable life, the English version, which her mother believes only the English truly understand, certainly when it comes to wearing wool. But while this dynamic plays out, it is revealed that the young woman is trying to write a memoir, one that her publisher insists needs to be far more personal. The English Understand Wool is skillful, funny, and exposes, through twists and turns, the quirks and peculiarities of the privileged, of celebrity, and the publishing world.

So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ (90 pages)

Published in 1979, this novella is the oldest of the books noted here, but time has certainly not diminished its power. The book is a semi-autobiographical story from a Senegalese author, written as a letter from the main character, Ramatoulaye, to her best friend, following the death of the narrator’s husband. The letter reveals a betrayal involving a secret marriage and confronts the struggles of a single Muslim mother of several children. The story wrestles with the undercurrents of Islamic culture, religion, colonialism, and deep societal pressures.

A Long Winter by Colm Tóibín (135 pages)

Not unlike Foster, Tóibín’s book was originally a short story, first published in 2005. In 2025, it was offered as a standalone novella as it delivers the literary weight of a full-length, traditional novel. The story is set in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees and revolves around a missing alcoholic mother, a woman who, it’s believed, walks away from her home in a massive snowstorm to return to the village where she grew up. A desperate search is undertaken to find and save the mother or to discover her frozen body. The writing is evocative and economical. It’s a heart-rending story of tragedy and regret.

We the Animals by Justin Torres (128 pages)

This is a fierce coming-of-age story. It centers on the lives of three rowdy brothers and their struggle for identity as they deal with family chaos and the heartbreak of boyhood. Torres’ story is told through the eyes of the youngest brother living with his siblings and his Brooklyn-born mother and father in upstate New York. The mother works a graveyard shift and is overwhelmed with parental responsibility. The father, a security guard, has an unpredictable and sometimes ferocious temper, so volatile and disturbing that the older brother cooks up a plan to kill his father and attempts to convince his reluctant younger siblings to go along with the plot. Torres’ prose is at times lyrical, at times sparse, and splendidly poetic.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (136 pages)

The search and desire for the perfect life may be an admirable pursuit. But when does the pursuit become all-consuming? The young couple in Latronico’s story is on a quest to discover their ultimate “happy place” in a world shaped by the illusion of happiness, fueled through image son social media and the technologies that dominate modern existence. The couple, from somewhere in Southern Europe but living in Berlin, is increasingly isolated from the people and places they have adopted as they fight a seemingly never-ending battle to turn the image of a perfect life into their reality. Perfection, a modern-day Greek tragedy in so many ways, was longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. Read it, and you’ll see why.

A Shining by John Fosse (112 pages)

The story begins like a horror tale: a broken-down car in the deep woods, the driver moving on foot through heavy snow to find help, trudging past abandoned rural homes as night begins to quickly fall. Fosse, a Norwegian writer and the recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in literature, writes with sensitivity for both the physical and the spiritual worlds. He delivers an unsettling story as the protagonist hears voices in the dark, encounters strange images of his parents, and believes he sees the vision of a lone man walking barefoot in the cold dark. A Shining reads at times like a fable, at times a spiritual parable, and at times a radiant mystery in just over 100 pages.

Still Life with Meredith by Ann Lewinson (104 pages) 

This is far from a shy book. Lewinson mixes sex, biting humor, outrageous behavior, and, of all things, a scattering of dead birds, giving the reader one hell of a literary ride. There is a palpable energy that moves through her prose, a power current of peril and danger not only in the story itself but in the use of language. One reviewer likens Still Life with Meredith to a “funhouse mirror.” Not everything in the narrative is what it appears to be. It’s a book packed with the unexpected and far deeper in its message than its 104 pages might suggest.

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American Moon by David W. Berner is available from Regal House Publishing.