What are the top book recommendations for 'uplifting and depressing'?

The worldwide bestseller, "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card comes to the screen at last in a major motion picture event in November 2013. Starring Hugo's Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, and Ben Kingsley, the movie is sure to inspire a new audience o... Read more about Ender's Game

Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, thick, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. Ender looked at Peter only to d...

READ THE EXCERPT

Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched... Read more about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

She dips a nod at me as she goes past. I let the mop push me back to the wall and smile and try to foul her equipment up as much as possible by not letting her see my eyes—they can’t tell so much abou...

READ THE EXCERPT

Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver's daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call he... Read more about Plain Kate

A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his da... Read more about The House in the Cerulean Sea

That was an understatement. He watched in rapt wonder as an eleven-year-old girl named Daisy levitated blocks of wood high above her head. The blocks spun in slow, concentric circles. Daisy frowned in...

READ THE EXCERPT

MORE THAN TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD

"You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll feel new sympathy for the curmudgeons in your life." -People

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon-the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his... Read more about A Man Called Ove

He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where ...

READ THE EXCERPT

The New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year

"A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."-The ... Read more about The Midnight Library

Mrs Elm made her first move. A knight hopping over the neat row of white pawns. ‘Of course, you’re going to be worried about the exams. But you could be anything you want to be, Nora. Think of all tha...

READ THE EXCERPT

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So th... Read more about Good Omens

You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fire. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major de...

READ THE EXCERPT

It's an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur's best friend has just announced that he's an alien.

After that, thing... Read more about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off ...

READ THE EXCERPT

'His spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction' Mail on Sunday

NAMED AS ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 MOST INSPIRING NOVELS

The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat ... Read more about The Colour of Magic

FIRE ROARED through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth color, octarine; where its o...

READ THE EXCERPT

The classic Anne of Green Gables; inspiration for the Netflix original series Anne With an E

Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make... Read more about Anne of Green Gables

Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods ...

READ THE EXCERPT