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the langoliers

1995

Four Past Midnight is a collection of novellas written by Stephen King in 1988 and 1989 and published in August 1990. It is his second book of this type, the first one being Different Seasons. The collection won the Bram Stoker Award in 1990 for Best Collection and was nominated for a Locus Award in 1991. In the introduction, King says that, while a collection of four novellas like Different Seasons, this book is more strictly horror with elements of the supernatural.

The four novellas contained in the collection are described here:

Pilot Brian Engle, immediately after a difficult flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, learns that his ex-wife Anne has died in an accident in Boston, and he boards a red-eye flight to Boston as a passenger. A flight attendant speaks of an unusual phenomenon over the Mojave Desert that resembles an aurora. Brian falls asleep during takeoff, having been awake throughout his previous flight. Dinah Bellman, a young blind girl with psychic abilities, also falls asleep, and awakes to find that her aunt and several other passengers have disappeared. Dinah, mistaking a wig for a scalp, screams and awakes Brian and nine other passengers: teacher Laurel Stevenson, English diplomat Nick Hopewell, writer Bob Jenkins, violinist Albert Kaussner and his girlfriend Bethany Simms, businessman Rudy Warwick, mechanic Don Gaffney, bank manager Craig Toomy and an unknown heavily intoxicated passenger. The passengers find that the crew and the passengers who were awake have disappeared, leaving the airliner under the control of the autopilot. Brian takes control of the plane, but is unable to make any outside contact, and the passengers can only see a dark void below the plane. Brian manages to land in Bangor, Maine despite furious protests from Craig, who insists on reaching Boston for an important conference that will decide his fate.

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