Firestarter meets IT: New Stephen King book hits in September

January 31st 2019, 1:30pm

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

As all of you guys know more than well at this point in time, I'm a massive Stephen King fan. Sure I still haven't had the chance to read his latest novel THE OUTSIDER (or his latest novella ELEVATION for that matter) I still more than consider myself one of King's "constant readers." And it's with this in mind I'm jumping for joy here in my desk chair as today we have word from King's site itself that the King of Horror has a new book headed our way this September.

The new book is called THE INSTITUTE and it will run 576 pages. Here is the rundown on the new book from the official Stephen King site:

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.

"As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It…" FIRESTARTER meets IT, you say? Sounds like a blast to me!

And while we're here, it kinda sounds like Mr. King may have been inspired by Josh Boone's still unreleased X-MEN horror movie THE NEW MUTANTS. And I guess that would make a bit of sense considering the two have probably become friends during the development of the recently announced 10-episode event series adaptation of THE STAND over at CBS All Access. Unfortunately, we don't know anything more about this new book at the time but stayed tuned and we will pass along word as soon as we hear it!