Cool, thanks for all the suggestions. I am heading to the library tonight, and I think I’ll be starting with “Lucifer’s Hammer” …
When Worlds Collide does the deed with a nice 1950’s flavor.
I was going to suggest this one, as well. It’s pretty unique in that it really IS the “end of the world”.
Most of the action is further into the future, but the last third of Evolution by Stephen Baxter would count.
Also, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.
The Bible 
I third Earth Abides. I think that Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and*Parable of the Talents might also fit the bill.
Octavia Butler’s Dawn. A quick synopsis:
Our heroine, who has survived the immediate fallout from a devastating nuclear war which has killed probably 99%+ of humanity, is woken from a state of suspended animation on board an alien spaceship, intermittently, over a period of a couple of hundred years. Gradually, she is educated and socialized in the ways of the new order to come, in which she and a few selected others will play a key role: that of encouraging and similarly educating other “woken” human survivors. The price humanity will pay for their rescue is that these aliens are promiscuous gene-traders, who are intent on pursuing a cross-breeding program with their captives/patients. In the future, the Earth will be re-populated with these beings who will be, genetically and culturally, half-human and half-alien.
Am I really the first person to recommend The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or is it just so obvious no one bothers?
I know I’m “fourthing” or maybe “fifthing” these books, but Earth Abides and Alas, Babylon are great. I think the former was made into a radio play at one time, my father remembers hearing it.
I’d recommend Good Omens (by Nick Gaiman and Terry Pratchett).
Actually, it has a 1930ish flavour. By the same author (Philip Wylie), I would recommend The End of the Dream.
sixthing “Earth abides”… by far my favorite book.
A Canticle for Liebowitz begins with the end of our civilization in a nuclear holocaust, and ends with another more than a millennium later when mankind repeats the same mistake. IMHO, and many others, one of the greatest nuclear war novels.
Jeez, to post #33 without Canticle for Leibowitz.
How bout one of my favorite classic scifi books, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke?
Another interesting one is Doomsday by Whitley Streiber IIRC. About the US after a short nuclear exchange. It is written in the style of a news reporter documenting all of the changes and adjustments and so forth, in what attempts to be a hyper-realistic fashion. It takes place mostly in Texas, which is interesting cause that’s where I grew up. IIRC they talk about Governor Mark White getting radiation triaged because he took a helicopter tour of San Antonio, which got totally pummelled (Houston was spared). Mark White was actually governor during my adolescence, so it was kind of bizarre reading about this alternate history.
“The Postman” is very good. I read it just recently on the recommendation of some of the posters on Fark.com. It’s by David Brin.
“On the Beach” would be my first choice. Beware, there is no happy ending.
BTW, did you know Stephen King’s “The Stand” started out as a short story in his “Night Shift” compilation" I think it was called “The Beach”.
Actually, the title was Warday and Streiber wrote it with the help of James Kunetka. It was the book I though of when I saw this thread.
The Streiber-Kunetka team did a similarly themed non-nuclear war inspired end of the world story called Nature’s End as well. But I recall this one being quite depressing, while Warday had a more hopeful theme to it.
The definitive last-man-on-earth book is The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel.
If you want an interesting take on the decline of the human race and feel that godawful prose is acceptable if it’s in one of the most fantastic books ever written, there’s The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.
There’s also an early 80’s nuclear war book about a bunch of people on a plane. IT’s Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham.
I wouldn’t put it in the category of Earth Abides or a lot of the other ones that have been mentioned, but it can be an interesting read. Hard to find sometimes though, since it’s out of print and I don’t think a lot of libraries have it.
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham