Einstein’s Dreams. It’s a series of vignettes dreamed up by a fictionalized young Albert Einstein about how time might function in different universes. Beautifully written and strangely sad.
High five! I love that dude (well, I say ‘dude’ - I suspect the theories about Mary Francis actually being pretty much co-writer are probably true. The quality of female characters is waaay above what I’d normally expect out of standard thriller novels of the era). ‘Bonecrack’ and ‘Reflex’ are my favourites.
On the SF line…
Ursula LeGuin - The Lathe of Heaven - great classic SF on the science fiction/fantasy borderline
Connie Willis - very prolific writer of all lengths of SF from doorstops to short stories, but including maybe as much as a dozen good novellas of about 100 - 200 pages, of which one of my favourites is All Seated on the Ground
Bob Shaw - Good old fashioned SF of Golden-Era-ish vintage. Other Days, Other Eyes (about 150 pages) is a minor classic, and my former neighborhood SF emporium, the Slow Glass Bookstore was named after it - I don’t think any of his books get very much over the 200 page limit
Loads of great recommendations here guys. Thanks very much!
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
It’s the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy. Unfortunately, the last two don’t meet your primary criteria as they are around 350 pages each. Still Annihilation is a great book and can be read as a stand-alone.
Black Man’s Burden, by Dallas McCord Reynolds
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32390/32390-h/32390-h.htm
Hell, Said the Duchess by Michael Arlen.
One of the damnedest books I’ve ever come across.
The Circus of Doctor Lao by Charles Finney.
Ditto.
And seconding Boyo Jim on the Richard Stark novels. Teach ya to do crimes, they will!
Steinbok’s Cup of Gold is a good one. And A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, IIRC, is pretty short, but intense.
The Westing Game
A novel marketed to kids, but which I rank as one of my favorite books. It’s amazing.
Harlan Ellison writes (well, wrote) shorter stuff, if you haven’t already checked him out. I think in fact he’s just come out with something new.
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan.
And I second Einstein’s Dreams (I need to reread it now) and The Westing Game.
I think he writes (Has he written anything since his stroke?) short stories almost exclusively; his longest piece, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, is just under 170 pages. He may have written some longer stories, though.
Jim Thompson’s stuff usually weighs in just under or over 200 pages. He writes very tight crime novels like The Grifters.
Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny. A very mediocre movie starring Jan Michael Vincent had the same title and was loosely based on it.
Can’t go wrong with early Heinlein. Currently rereading “Double Star”.
If we stick to acclaimed classics that just happen to be short…
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A Room of Ones Own by Virginia Woolf
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie By Muriel Spark
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wildet
I read Michael Chabon’s Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Final Solution, in one evening – the paperback version is only 131 pages.
If you haven’t read The Martian by Andy Weir yet, I’d certainly suggest that. It’s outside the scope of your 200-page limit, but I read that in about eight hours.
Too late to edit – whenever I want to enhance my books-read-per-year count and/or am feeling blue, I always reach for P.G. Wodehouse and in particular his Jeeves and Wooster novels. They read lightning-fast, and they make my day brighter.
Yeah, if you want to read a lot of books quickly, a series of short crime/detective novels would be a good bet—like Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books, or Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series.
Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is quite short.
There is an American writer named O. Henry. I would guess you have heard of him.
He mostly wrote short stories. But I recall that some of his stories were much, much longer than others.
One story I remember as being extremely funny and entertaining was, “The Ransom of Red Chief”.
If you are looking for longer stories, perhaps you might like to read a few of his short stories instead of one big novel?
In that way, if you don’t like one of them, you might still enjoy some of the others.
Here is a list of several of his stories ranked in order from best to worst. I see that “Ransom of Red Chief” is ranked number four.
I also really enjoyed The Gift of the Magi. It was ranked number one.