by Stephen King
First published 2019
The redeye from Los Angeles to Boston lands wrong. Ten passengers wake somewhere over Maine and find the crew gone, the other seats empty, and Bangor airport below them silent and abandoned. They get the plane down, but the world outside feels off in a way none of them can name. The food is stale before it is touched. The air tastes dead. And somewhere beyond the tree line, something is moving. Investment banker Craig Toomey is already coming apart. He knows what is out there. His father used to threaten him with the Langoliers, creatures that devour people who waste time. Craig is not a reliable man, but he might be a useful one. Mystery writer Bob Jenkins works the problem like a plot. His theory: the plane punched through a rip in time and the passengers are now trapped in a used-up past, a place that does not tolerate visitors. Getting back means flying blind into the same rip and trusting it will open again. A young blind girl named Dinah Bellman, traveling alone, understands something about the situation that the others do not. The creatures are already at the runway. The clock is the whole story.
Genres: science-fiction, suspense, mystery, horror, thriller, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, claustrophobic, dark, dread-filled, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: mystery-unfolding, race-against-time, trapped-together, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Los Angeles, Boston, Maine, Bangor
Period: 20th-century
304 pages · Paperback · Scribner
Content warnings: death