Fancy a Cry?: Books with the Saddest Endings

Books just about guaranteed to leave you in tears.
Updated October 2, 2022
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The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro
Paper Book
Winner 1989 Booker Prize: A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England.
Atonement
Ian McEwan
Paper Book
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge....
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
Paper Book
Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the...
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara
Paper Book
'I'm not exaggerating when I say this novel challenged everything I thought I knew about love and friendship. It's one of those books that stays with you forever.' - Dua Lipa The million-copy bestseller, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, by the author of To Paradise,...
Where the Red Fern Grows
Wilson Rawls
Ebook
A beloved classic that captures the powerful bond between man and man's best friend.   Billy has long dreamt of owning not one, but two, dogs. So when he's finally able to save up enough money for two pups to call his own--Old Dan and Little Ann--he's ecstatic. It doesn't...
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green
Ebook
I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once. Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a...
Me Before You
Jojo Moyes
Paper Book
Discover the love story that captured 21 million hearts . . . from the author of The Last Letter from Your Lover, now a major motion picture The No. 1 bestselling international phenomenon and major film adaptation. 'One...
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
Paper Book
Rediscover the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry The pair met when Clare was just six and Henry thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true. Soon to be a major Sky TV series,...
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Paper Book
With an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless...
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Paper Book
Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are dashed as Lennie -...
Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
Paper Book
The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence 'A masterpiece of poignant brilliance . . . heartbreaking, and utterly, completely brilliant' Guardian 'A timeless tearjerker' Independent
The End of the Affair
Graham Greene
Paper Book
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix...
Marley & Me
John Grogan
Paper Book
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
Michelle Zauner
Paper Book
From the indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity. 'A story that is both beautiful and heartbreaking; it is as raw as it is precious. I bawled my eyes...
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
Paper Book
My Sister's Keeper
Jodi Picoult
Paper Book
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND MAJOR MOTION PICTURE 'Emotionally riveting and will test your tear ducts to the limit' Daily Express In all thirteen years of Anna's life, her parents have never given her a choice: she was born to be her sister...
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Paper Book
HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books...

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