Havrilesky’s funny, grumpy and helpful collected advice offers hearteningly realistic encouragement to the 21st-century worrier

The giddy invention in this novel is a spirit-lifter in itself, but its vision of all too familiar folly comes with a heartening reminder that we can learn from our errors

This collection of heart-catching poetry offers the reader something a novel never can – a world of pure potential, with no beginning or end

This 20-year-old story of sixth graders competing for Academic Bowl glory while learning to champion diversity feels more prescient than ever

When David Foster Wallace gave a speech to graduating students about the significance of day-to-day banalities, he wasn’t to know it would be tattooed on bodies, or published as a book that would give so many hope

Comfort can be found in the small adventures of a bumbling, anxious doctor because everything always turns out right in the end

The mass migration of African Americans out of the US south forever changed the country’s cultural fabric – and Wilkerson’s history of this period is full of sacrifice and hope

A 16-year-old girl’s determination in facing the unknown at the end of the world is testament to the power of hope, and to living rather than just surviving

This extraordinary book by Anne Frank’s stepsister casts an unflinching gaze on the past and looks forward hopefully for humanity’s future

For anyone who’s ever behaved irrationally while in love, and wishes to make creative use of these tumultuous emotions, here is some fine inspiration

The declaration of a geological era defined by mankind’s destruction might be cause for despair, but this book inspires with tales of resourcefulness and survival, writes Claire Armitstead

In a rotten year, when public language has been poisoned by politics and prejudice, the personal integrity of poetry can keep us going

In a story of rarely remitting disaster, the relentless determination of Scarlett O’Hara provides a useful lesson in never giving in

This almost-autobiographical story tells of the ‘sombre majesty of splendours no one knows’ in the very private life of its hero – and offers consoling hymns to modest dreams

Atwood’s dystopia is a terrifying vision of patriarchal oppression, but it is also a story of rebellion and the indomitability of the human spirit

Written to create a female hero, this book about hidden magic in the everyday eschews fairy-tale bliss to close with an inconclusive yet brilliant assertion that monsters must be faced together

Solnit’s recollections of her mother’s advancing Alzheimer’s is as much a memoir as a meditation on stories – how we tell them and why we need them

The story of an elderly Cuban fisherman, with little but hope to sustain him through a punishing life, tells a fundamental truth about life

Depicting 1939’s New York expo of a utopian future alongside its hero’s faltering first steps towards independence, this is a heartening story of renewal