Pre Pub Book Buzz: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

I'm bringing back Pre Pub Book Buzz -- or Books I'm Stoked About -- Saturdays! Why? Because there are always a ton of upcoming releases I can't wait to read and Saturdays are kind of a free day to do promote those.

You had to know the Stephen King post was coming :) If you've been hiding under a rock, Doctor Sleep is the highly anticipated sequel to King's The Shining. It's due to hit shelves on September 24 and I couldn't be more excited! Last fall I read the e short by King and his son Joe Hill, In the Tall Grass, only to discover that about half of the file were previews of King and Hill's upcoming books (Doctor Sleep and NOS4A2). While I was itching for a taste of Sleep, the knowledge that it was almost a year out at that point was too much. There was no way I could read the sample and then stand waiting that long! I may have to schedule a Shining reread in preparation if I have a chance, though!

Here's a bit about the book from the Simon and Schuster catalog:

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 spunky twelve-year-old 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. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

Cemetery Dance will be releasing a special slipcover edition of the hardcover. Here's the link to their order page.

King also has a new Hard Case Crime due out in June called Joyland.