The world experiences an abrupt and unthinkable cataclysm on the morning of October 29, 2018. Kevin March, high school band trombonist and wannabe writer playing hooky, is witness to its beginning. To stay alive, Kevin embarks on a journey that promises to change everything yet again. On his journey, into a digital recorder he chronicles his experiences at the end of his world. This book is a transcript of that recording. Depicting an unspeakable apocalypse unlike any seen in fiction—there are no zombies, viruses or virals, no doomsday asteroid, no aliens, no environmental cataclysm, no nuclear holocaust—with a Holden Caulfieldesque protagonist at his world’s end, The Late Bloomer is both a companion piece to Lord of the Flies and a Bradburyian Halloween tale. The Late Bloomer is harrowing, grim and poignant in the way of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Told in Kevin March’s singular and unforgettable voice, delivering a gripping narrative with an unsparing climax as moving as it is terrifying, The Late Bloomer defies expectations of the genre and will haunt those who read it

Liz Van Den Sandt's ex-husband, Max, an ineffectual rebel, has drowned himself. In prison for a failed act of violence against the government, he had betrayed his colleagues. Now Liz has been asked to perform a direct service for the black nationalist movement, at considerable danger to herself. Can she take such a risk in the face of Max's example of the uselessness of such actions? Yet… how can she not?

Griselda de Reptonville did not know what love was until she joined one of Mrs Hatch's famous house parties at Beams, and there met Leander ...' The Late Breakfasters (1964) was the sole novel Robert Aickman published in his lifetime. Its heroine Griselda is invited to a grand country house where a political gathering is to be addressed by the Prime Minister, followed by an All Party Dance. Expecting little, Griselda instead meets the love of her life. But their fledgling closeness is cruelly curtailed, and for Griselda life then becomes a quest to recapture the wholeness and happiness she felt all too briefly. 'Those, if any, who wish to know more about me' - Aickman wrote in 1965 - 'should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters.' Opening as a comedy of manners, its playful seriousness slowly fades into an elegiac variation on the great Greek myth of thwarted love

CRIME NEVER SLEEPS. Los Angeles can be a dangerous city — never more so than in the dead of night. Detective Renée Ballard, once one of the department’s young hotshots, now works ‘The Late Show’, the notorious graveyard shift at the LAPD. It’s a thankless job keeping strange hours in a twilight world of tragedy and violence, handing over her investigations as the sun rises, never getting closure. Some nights are worse than others. And tonight is the worst yet. Two cases: a brutal assault, and a multiple murder with no suspect. Ballard knows it is always darkest before dawn. But what she doesn’t know is how deep her dual investigation will take her into the dark heart of her city, her department and her past

If you thought a fiddler on a roof was in a precarious position, imagine what happens when a middle-aged professor with a bad back takes up the cello. Ari Goldman hasn’t played in twenty-five years, but he’s decided to give the cello one last chance. First he secures a seat in his eleven-year-old son’s youth orchestra, and then he’s ready for the big time: the Late Starters Orchestra of New York City — a bona fide amateur string orchestra for beginning or recently returning adult players. We accompany Goldman to LSO rehearsals (their motto is “If you think you can play, you can”) and sit in on his son’s Suzuki lessons (where we find out that children do indeed learn differently from adults). And we wonder whether Goldman will be good enough to perform at his next birthday party. Coming to the rescue is the ghost of Goldman’s very first cello teacher, Mr. J, who continues to inspire and guide him — about music and more — through this enchanting midlife…

Désiré Cordier — mild-mannered former librarian, put-upon husband, lover of boules — is losing his mind. Or is he? Happily tucked away in the Winterlight Home for the Elderly, Désiré is looking forward to a quiet retirement with the other forgetful residents, safe in the knowledge that no one knows he's faking his memory loss. And as if there weren't reasons enough to opt out of the modern world, it would be worth it just to see Rosa Rozendaal again — the love of Désiré's youth, the one who got away. But dementia isn't all fun and games. There's a former war criminal hiding out in the home; once-beautiful Rosa might be too far gone to return Désiré's ardour; and our hero soon begins to suspect he might not be the only one in Winterlight who's acting a part… A tender love story of demented minds and honourable hearts, and a razor-sharp satire of the indignities of old age and the callousness of caregiving, The Latecomer excoriates our society and asks: might we all be better off forgetting?

This document was generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter program Copyright © 1971 by Ursula K. Le Guin, Published by arrangement with Charles Scribner’s Sons, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-162760 First Avon printing, April, 1973, Sixth Printing