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Doctor Sleep

On sale

11th May 2021

Price: £10.99

This is Horror Novel of the Year, 2013

Select a format

Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781444761184

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The major motion picture starring Ewan McGregor available from Netflix May 2022

With a stunning new cover look, King’s ‘powerful sequel to The Shining‘ (Observer) – an instant international No. 1 bestseller.

Following a childhood haunted by terrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance has been drifting for decades. Finally, he settles into a job at a nursing home where he draws on his remnant ‘shining’ power to provide crucial comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes ‘Doctor Sleep’.

Then he meets Abra Stone, a girl with ‘the brightest shining’ ever seen. But her gift is attracting the beautiful yet merciless Rose the Hat and her followers The True Knot. They may look harmless, the sort of people who are devoted to their campers and RVs, but they live off the ‘steam’ that children like Abra produce.

Now Dan must call upon his powers once more as he battles for Abra’s soul and survival – facing his fears and reawakening ghosts from his past.

Reviews

Spectator
Stephen King's frightscapes are among the most incredible in literature, yet one believes in them unquestioningly.
Sun
Terrifying and, as always, brilliantly-crafted tale, you won't be left wanting. But you may be left scared.
Daily Express
A magnificent sequel to one of the finest horror yarns written....Brilliant.
Daily Express Saturday Mag
highly anticipated sequel to his bestselling 1977 novel The Shining.
John Connolly, Irish Times
the book remains hopeful and hugely humane.
Observer
King is a very remarkable and singular writer. He can catch dialogue, throw away an observation or mint a simile, sometimes, brilliantly...Storytelling is everything - and by golly does he know how to carry the reader.
Sunday Express
Sheer page-turning suspense . . . addictive . . . a triumph from the world's finest horror novelist
Financial Times
It's a gripping, powerful novel, all the more so for being patently heartfelt.
Guardian
King finds a mode of the supernatural that has a melancholic beauty while avoiding spiritualist blather
Daily Telegraph
Doctor Sleep is a warm, entertaining novel by a man who is no longer the prisoner of his demons, but knows where to find them when he needs to call on them.
The Sunday Times
Thirty-six years on from his horror classic, THE SHINING, Stephen King's sequel shows he still has plenty of creative steam.
The Times
King has written a sequel, the tale of what happened to little Danny when he grew up. Need one say more? It cannot fail...the best thing to emerge from King's glittering, warped imagination is of mundane, small-town America corrupted by hidden forces...you cannot but respect his ruthless expertise as a storyteller...even those of us who would never freely pick up a Stephen King must genuflect to a master.
John Connolly, Irish Times
Doctor Sleep has a tightness, an economy, after some of the lengthier novels of recent years, but also a lightness of touch. It reads less like a horror novel than a thriller and ends on a scene of intimate and intense human contact, a gift of consolation at the moment of death.
Mail On Sunday
King is too skilled a storyteller for Doctor Sleep to be anything other than unputdownable.
SciFi Bulletin
Both an excellent sequel to The Shining and a strong novel in its own right, this is one of King's best books in the last decade.
Time Out
Suspenseful, thrilling and packed with twists....an incredibly sincere piece of writing.
Shortlist
It still grips, just differently than the original.
Metro
King still remains the daddy of them all.
Guardian
...the novel's deepest shiverings depend on no made-up devils.
sfx.co.uk
For the truth is, there are few writers who have such a way with character (and that character delivered through authorial peeks into thought and feeling, is so important in his books)...Once his stories get their hooks into you, they're impossible to put down....The denouement of the novel takes place in autumn, and that's no coincidence. You can practically smell the leaf piles burning, their fragrant smoke mixed with that of funeral pyres.
Evening Standard
This brilliant sequel....King [is] a genius at transforming the ordinary into the utterly horrific...
Daily Mail
This is the master on top form, drawing his readers in with his amazing storytelling power - first with the tension, then with the richness and details of the scene-setting and characterisation.
The Sunday Times
King's own supplies of creative steam show little sign of being depleted.
Observer
A powerful sequel to The Shining
Guardian, Book of the Week
King finds a mode of the supernatural that has a melancholic beauty
Margaret Atwood, New York Times
All the virtues of his best work
Financial Times
A gripping, powerful novel, all the more so for being patently heartfelt
The Sunday Times
King's own supplies of creative steam show little sign of being depleted.
Observer
A powerful sequel to The Shining
Guardian, Book of the Week
King finds a mode of the supernatural that has a melancholic beauty
Margaret Atwood, New York Times
By the end of this book your fingers will be mere stubs of their former selves...King's inventiveness and skill show no signs of slacking: Doctor Sleep has all the virtues of his best work
Financial Times
A gripping, powerful novel, all the more so for being patently heartfelt