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Doctor Sleep will be the 61st book published by Stephen King; it will be his 50th novel, and the 43rd under his own name. The novel will be a sequel to King's 1977 novel The Shining.

The book is scheduled to be released on 24 September 2013.

Development

  • King told an audience at the Canon Theatre in Toronto that the story will concern the character of Danny Torrance, who "is now 40 years old and living in upstate New York, where he works as the equivalent of an orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. Danny’s real job is to visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers."
  • On 8 May 2012, a description of the book's plot was released on Stephen King's official website:
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless — mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival.
  • In a recent news announcement, King disclosed the sequel will take up the story when Dan is middle-aged after “drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence". Dan will settle in a New Hampshire town and become known as "Doctor Sleep." He then comes into contact with Abra Stone, a 12-year-old who has "the brightest shining ever seen", and he ends up “run[ning] afoul of a gang of wandering psychic vampires who feed on people's energy”.
  • A spokesman for King's British UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, said Doctor Sleep would return to the "characters and territory" of the original novel. "This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon,” he added.

References

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