This ending is very common in the short stories by Charles Birkin:
The Lesson: A couple leave their young son with his uncle while they are hosting a party. The child ties up his uncle (who is drunk) and puts a plastic bag over the man's head to pretend he is an astronaut. When the parents find him, they are angry that he got drunk while taking care of their son. They decide to "teach him a lesson" by leaving him tied up while they go out - but then they get into a car accident. The badly wounded mother tries to tell hospital staff that the uncle needs help, but can only manage to say the word "bag", making the nurses think that she wants something from her handbag. Meanwhile, at home, the little boy is wondering why his uncle doesn't want to play any more ...
Marjorie's On Starlight features Marjorie going horseriding with her cousin, who is a cruel bully. They argue and the cousin reveals that Marjorie's parents have died, which she wasn't supposed to know yet. This results in Marjorie reacting, startling her horse, and causing it to bolt and throw her into the path of a steamroller that runs over her head.
The Mouse Hole: In occupied France during WWII, an incompetent Resistance fighter known as "The Mouse" causes an innocent man to get shot by Nazis. The Nazis soon arrive at the man's door, and his mother is forced to hide her wounded son inside the oven. However, the soldiers think she is actually hiding The Mouse in there, and light the fire. The Mouse doesn't care and just chalks it up as another death for the cause.
Hard to Get begins as a comedic story about an army officer trying and failing to seduce a beautiful woman in a restaurant. Then it's revealed they belong to a race of bloodsucking aliens that have taken over the earth, and their meal is a still-living human woman who has been tortured and trussed up to be served at the table.
T-I-M: A woman collapses in an accident at home and begs her young son to call for medical help. However, he gives the operator the wrong name, and ends up being connected to the speaking clock (a recorded service). He doesn't realize who he is talking to, and his mother lies dying on the floor unaware of what's really happening.
Spawn of Satan: A woman moves to a town where gangs have been stirring up racial hatred. There's an initial twist when we discover that her husband, who soon arrives to join her, is black. The real twist is when the woman suffers a fatal heart attack while driving, causing her to run over and kill a white child. Her husband is gruesomely lynched in revenge by the gangs.
Fairy Dust appears to be a sweet little tale about a woman reading Peter Pan to her young stepson. At the end, she convinces him that he can fly like Peter Pan, and lures him into jumping off an 80-foot balcony so that her own child can inherit the family estate.
Old Mrs Strathers: An elderly woman is paralysed and unable to speak following a severe stroke. She discovers that her son is about to be murdered by his wife, who is cheating on him. The son is poisoned, and the old lady struggles to her feet. There's a brief Hope Spot...then she falls head-first into the fireplace. The wife and her boyfriend get away with the murder, while Mrs Strathers is horribly mutilated and is sent to a work house because there's no one left to take care of her.
The Finger of Fear: A rich, miserly alcoholic is upset that she's obliged to pay for her housekeeper's child to have dental treatment. She ultimately comes up with a "solution", and has her chauffeur drive a box over to the dentist's surgery. It turns out to contain the child's severed head; the miser having figured that this would be cheaper than sending the whole child to the dentist.
A Dutch YA horror book ("Beyond the grave") by author Tais Teng had a particularly jarring example. After the teenage heroine has spent the entire novel trying to collect the three Artifacts of Doom on the orders of the villain (even visiting the underworld in the process), she is captured by him after she befriends and falls in love with the bearer of the last one, a teenage boy. He goes to collect the Reality-Writing Book to get her back in a Hostage for MacGuffin exchange when he discovers that his younger brother (who's just learned how to write) used one of the pages to spell out "THE SUN GOES OUT". Nothing gets resolved, all life on Earth is just going to expire in an endless ice age. The end.
In the short story "Coffee" by Simon Bestwick, an overworked employee is Driven to Suicide through sleep deprivation caused by drinking too much coffee and then being unable to sleep at night. However, the employee (never given a name or gender) comes back as a zombie and is forced to stay at the company because they are not allowed to leave without an appropriate notice period. They're also disciplined for spending too much time at the coffee machine, having their coffee privaleges revoked as a result.
In the short story collection, The Dark Side of the Earth, every single story except for the last one ends with a cruel twist. The story Silent Pursuit easily takes the cake: The lead detective rides the subway one night and, out of sheer luck, sees the murderer knocking a woman unconscious on the last train. He races to get there before he can get off and a fistfight ensues, culminating in the detective throwing the murderer out of the window and into the river. He helps the victim up and, when they get off the train, they are surrounded by policemen pointing their guns at him and ordering him to let her go. Because the real murderer is dead in the river, the woman is unconscious, and he can provide no genuine alibis for the dates of the other murders, all present evidence points to him being the real murderer; and he will never be able to prove otherwise.
The Dark Tower (2004), which comes with Stephen King breaking the forth wall to warn readers about it. After years of struggle, losing everyone he cared about in the process, Roland Deschain finally reaches the Dark Tower and steps inside. Inside, he finds objects and recreations of people from his life. When he reaches the topmost floor he comes to a horrible realization - he's climbed the tower before. The last door leads back to the desert his journey began in, far too late to make any meaningful change to his life. And then he's pulled through the door, his memory quickly fading, as he repeats his journey yet again. However, there is a hint that this time, he might be able to break the loop.
In The Deptford Histories novel The Oaken Throne, Ysabelle has just decided to abandon her status as the Starwife and run off with her true love, Vespertilio. She had rejected him before but now regrets doing so. As she is rushing to him and passionately proclaiming how she truly feels, she skids to a stop when she sees him lying dead. He had been murdered in the brief time she'd left him alone. The novel ends with her weeping over his corpse.
In Jeff Long's The Descent, capsules containing a deadly bioweapon are seeded through the sub-Pacific underground world by a genocidal Corrupt Corporate Executive. Just as it appears the capsules will remain unactivated, averting the annihilation of both the hadal natives and their defenseless human captives, their contents are unwittingly released by the only two human characters in the novel who want to spare hadal civilization.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball: The Heffleys' house, which the family were planning to sell, getting a giant hole through the middle from their old hot tub being dropped from the roof. This caused both the family buying the house to back out, and leaving the Heffleys unable to afford their new house. On the other hand, Greg is glad to have not left Rowley, as he initially thought.
The climax of Part of Your Nightmare has Shelly retrieve the trident for Ursula as part of their deal, only for Ursula to turn her into a fish completely since she only assumed she'd turn her back into a human when all the contract said was that Shelly owed Ursula a favor in exchange for becoming the fastest swimmer.
The climax of Fiends on the Other Side has Jamal give Dr. Facilier the necklace in the hopes of releasing his brother from the curse, but the shadow man turns him into a shadow instead, gloating that he only heard what he wanted to hear in terms of their deal.
Be Careful What You Wish Fur ends with Delia attempting to trade the coat back in exchange for the kidnapped puppies, but it's too late to take it off and she changes completely into a mannequin.
Liar, Liar, Head on Fire ends on another huge Hope Spot when Hector gives the Zeus Cup to Mae so she can run away with it and save the world. But then, Mae gives the Cup to Hades and reveals she made her own deal with him to become a rock star, and Hector is killed and his soul becomes trapped in the River Styx.
Once Upon A Scream has a Hope Spot where Dawn defeats Maleficent with the Sword of Truth and saves Phillipa and the town, but Maleficent faked her defeat and poses as Phillipa to get the spinning wheel back, then enchants Dawn to sleep forever where no one will ever find her.
The Circle of Ter-ROAR has Silas give Scar the staff in exchange for his family and friends' safety, only for Scar to point out that while he agreed not to hurt them, the hyenas aren't bound to it and close the book preparing to eat Silas.
Second Star to the Fright ends on a massiveHope Spot where Barrie tosses the hook to the crocodile, ensuring that the pirate captain will be doomed to old age, and he makes it back to the marina and makes his way home. Then he gets home, sees a strange woman opening the door, and learns that the Darlings moved out decades ago, with his older sister married with kids and his parents in a retirement community. Bittersweet, but compared to the other books, this ending is downright happy.
Tana French's novel In the Woods. Main character homicide detective Robb and his partner Cassie have figured out who the killer is but don't have enough evidence to prove it. They set up a trap to get the killer to confess to Cassie. The trap works perfectly, Cassie plays her part brilliantly, even working the Irish equivalent of a Miranda Warning into the conversation, and they get a full confession of the entire plot on tape. Then the twist comes...the killer was the victim's teenage sister, and she's only 17, not 18 as the detectives had initially believed. This means everything she said outside the presence of her parents is inadmissible. She gets away with the murder, and the case destroys not only Robb and Cassie's careers, but their friendship as well. The book ends with Robb alone and miserable.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, almost. The Gentleman with Thistle-down Hair intended to curse Lady Pole to die shortly after being released from his enchantment, as it is "very traditional." She gets lucky.
In Julian Jay Savarin's Lemmus novels, the seemingly hospitable planet Terra (a.k.a. Earth) is revealed to have a malign influence on colonists from an advanced Galactic civilisation, causing them to become violent and warlike. Those who possess immunity are ruthlessly killed, but not before arming a Doomsday Device to destroy the planet. Even then the Galactic civililisation refuses to give up on the planet, and uses advanced technology and time travel to evolve a new race of humans in the hope that they will overcome the evil influence. It doesn't work; after millennia of conflict the planet is destroyed in a nuclear war. The last survivor, seeing two Galactic observers in radiation suits, believes them to be Jesus and Mary and curses them with her dying breath. Only then do the Galactics admit that they have failed, and blow up the planet's sun.
The Machineries of Empire has an underplayed example; at the end of Ninefox Gambit, the Fortress of Scattered Needles is conquered and Cheris breathes a sigh of relief that she'll finally be rid of Jedao and her life will return to some semblance of normalty, only for Kel Command to send a fleet and kill everyone in an attempt to get rid of the undead general once and for all. Cheris is the only survivor and she ends up being possessed by Jedao.
"Megan's Law" by Jack Ketchum has this ending. The story revolves around a concerned father turning vigilante when a convicted rapist/child molester moves to the town. Eventually, the father murders the guy - and then we discover the father himself is abusing his own daughter; he just didn't want any "competition" for her.
Little known YA horror series The Midnight Library does this enough to put the SAW films to shame. Many a story would give the protagonists a false hope that they've won before yanking their leash in the worst way possible. You've exorcised an evil, homicidal demon from your family's new parrot? Sorry, he's possessed your beloved Big Friendly Dog. You think you've thwarted a killer who's been poisoning those close to you? Actually you were causing the deaths with some unknown mental power by winking, and now you're going to die from winking at your reflection. You think you've escaped a creepy faceless ghost whose hunting you in your dreams? He's doing it through the portrait you made of his church, now he's gonna strangle you! You've just saved your friend by possession by a Mayan death god? Ooh, tough luck, turns out your other friend is the monster's real host, and he's gonna bring an age of death upon the Earth.
In The Well of Ascension, our main character Vin finds the titular well after looking for it, due to believing that she is the Hero of Ages. And then everything goes to hell when the mist spirit that's been hanging around the entire book fatally wounds Elend, Sazed is attacked by the Brainwashed and Crazy Marsh when trying to find Vin to stop her from doing anything hasty, and Vin enters the Well of Ascension, where she gives up the power of the Well in order to follow the prophecy, even if it means letting Elend die...only to free an Eldritch Abomination that was trapped there and manipulated the entire prophecy so that someone would give up the power and free him. When Sazed reads the true prophecy later, having beaten Marsh for the time being, he loses his faith in all of the religion he's studied over the years.
At the end of My Sister's Keeper, Anna finally gets medically emancipated from her parents...and is then killed in a car accident, yet her kidneys — the organ she had been asked to donate earlier in the book, leading to the aforementioned emancipation quest — are perfectly intact to give to her sister, rendering her actions pointless.
Never Let Me Go ends with all the efforts of both the clone protagonists and the clone-rights activists who had been working behind the scenes since before the book began being nullified and reversed after a Mad Doctor uses illegal means to create genetically perfect children, a scandal that turns the general population against cloning. This is never foreshadowed at all prior to The Reveal.
The Hanging Tree ended with the titular tree seemingly chopped down and the rest of the forest saved, and protagonist Willow heading off to college with her boyfriend. Several years later they use the tunnel built underneath the forest where the tree once stood, see it's evil personification in their windscreen and fatally crash into the tunnel wall.
Scissorman ends with the teenaged protagonists discovering their stepmother is the titular monster as she serves them their pet rabbits for dinner. She uses this fact to Scare 'Em Straight.
Amy ends with the titular character swapping places with the protagonist Annie, leaving her to die in the morgue while she lives her life instead.
Nicholas Fisk's book A Rag, A Bone, and a Hank of Hair, although written for children, has an extremely dark final twist. Brin, the protagonist, has been interacting with the "reborn" family cloned from the past and living in a historical simulation, and come to appreciate their way of life more than his own futuristic lifestyle. So, great, he's learned about historical people, right? Well, no; Brin is then told that he is also a Reborn, but was raised from birth in the future society rather than the simulation. The fact he ended up preferring the historical lifestyle is taken as a sign that, even with no preknowledge and given every advantage, Reborns cannot be integrated with the future society and are thus useless to it. He and the Reborns are locked inside the simulation, and then all blown up.
A (somewhat Downplayed) version occurs at the tail end of Arc 3 of Re:Zeronote corresponding to the anime's first episode of Season 2, or final episode of Season 1 in the Director's Cut version. Subaru has finally managed to manufacture the "happy end" he was searching for after an emotionally devastating and relentlessly brutal Arc with two distinct enemies, each horrific in their own way. The Whale is defeated, and Petelgeuse, as well as his fingers, is gone. He saves Emilia, reunites with her, confesses his feelings, and everything seems like it'll work out - until, out of nowhere, it turns out that Rem was somehow affected by the Whale's effectnote specifically, it later turns out that she was attacked by the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony who ate her name and memories - and Subaru's most recent save point has just been created after Petelgeuse's death, meaning that he has no way to redo it all and save her. Cue the horrified looks.
"Bess", one of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The story stars a horse raiser named John Nicholas who has just one of his horses (the titular Bess) put down. He decides to come to Bess's skeleton and pat her skull. There is a rattlesnake living inside the skull that gives John a fatal bite on the arm.
This particular storyline is actually Older Than Print, going back to (at least) the story of Oleg the Wise's death from the 12th century Russian Primary Chronicle.
Slowly by Fay Woolf: A six-year-old boy has been trapped under the wreckage of a collapsed fairground ride, and rescue workers fight to free him. They do manage to get the machinery off him, but then they discover it's cut him into a pile of severed body parts, which rain down onto the rescuers.
In Antonia Michaelis' The Storyteller, the plot of the story details that there has been a string of murders in Anna’s hometown and her love interest Abel, has been framed for the murders. It turns out that Abel really is the murderer and he ends up killing himself once he is cornered by the police. The story then ends with Anna taking care of Micha, Abel's younger sister and imagining that she is living with a different Abel from the one she knew.
The book version of Struck by Lighting: The protagonist dies in the end, all after he doesn't get into the university of his dreams (and the only one to which he applied), the entire school hates him, his literary magazine failed miserably, and he never got to make it out of Clover.
It is also implied to be a good thing because he finally decided it is better to manipulate others than to be suppressed and got hit by a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
And his mom said: "Since opposites attract, I would like to think that he was so positive the moment he died - so happy, he pulled that bolt right out of the sky."
Through Darkest America by Neil Barrett, Jr. goes over the top with this one. In this After the End scenario, large animals have gone extinct leading most meat to come from "stock" semi-feral (possessing no language skills) humans who are implied to be mentally deficient. Early in the story, the protagonist's sister is sent to "Silver Island," a government-run facility dedicated to having the best and brightest restore the wonders of the pre-catastrophic world—the thought of her flourishing there helps the protagonists to weather a series of tragedies. It is revealed at the end of the novel that the story for Silver Island is a cover—its actual use to force those selected to breed with stock, preventing inbreeding.
In Hector Hugh Munro (Saki)'s The Unbearable Bassington, the last chapter ends with Francesca Bassington getting word of her son Comus's death; it horribly sours the ironic tone of everything that has gone before, while Comus is a poor excuse for a tragic hero. And a few moments later that the other love of her life, her treasured Van der Meulen painting, is "a splendid copy, but still, unfortunately, only a copy".
Many of the volumes of the Vampire Hunter D novels have Downer Endings, but the end of the longest story, the 4-part Pale Fallen Angels was downright sick. Although many died, D has slain the evil vampire lord, the children are safe from the evil Guide, Taki is safe from being sacrificed and the good, evolved vampire Baron Byron Balazs is planning on forging the first links of friendship between the Nobility and mankind. Then, with no warning or preamble, a hypnotic suggestion planted in Taki causes her to attack Byron, he rips out her throat instinctively while defending himself and in his shame he hires D to kill him, which D does without hesitation. Apparently you just can't have a happy ending in this series.
, and that a negative review than pans the ending