Stephen King Releasing New Novel 'The Institute' This September

Stephen King is arguably more popular than ever, thanks in large part to the various adaptations of his iconic works being hits on screens both big and small. Luckily, the author is as active as ever, confirming that his latest novel, The Institute, will hit shelves on September 10th.

StephenKing.com describes the story, "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.'"

It continues, "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."

From iconic stories like IT, Pet Sematary, and The Stand all in various stages of development, fans might assume that only the author's classic stories are getting adapted. However, his 2018 novel The Outsider is currently being developed into an HBO series. The author has previously revealed that, when it comes to adaptations of his works, he enjoys them more when they stick closely to what he chronicled in the original stories.

"I think that they're the best when they stick close to the books because, I don't know, I feel a proprietary interest in that," King revealed to the Associated Press. "I always think that some of the adaptations that don't work that well are ones where they buy the concept, the basic concept, but then say well yes but we'll do this, that and the other thing to it. So I always feel a little bit like they bought my launching pad and put their own rocket up, and sometimes the rocket explodes... The ones that I like the best are the ones where they stick close to the story and where I see changes and things that have been altered and I say to myself, 'I wish I'd thought of that.'"

Grab your copy of The Institute when it hits shelves on September 10th.

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