The Institute: A Novel

· Sold by Simon and Schuster
4.6
549 reviews
Ebook
576
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King whose “storytelling transcends genre” (Newsday) comes “another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable” (The Boston Globe) about a group of kids confronting evil.

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 “first-rate entertainment that has something important to say. We all need to listen” (The Washington Post).

Ratings and reviews

4.6
549 reviews
Junaid Chisti
April 19, 2020
This book takes a very long time to establish the setting - I mean the story doesn't even start moving forward until half-way through the book. It also drags the ending as well. I thought a book about psychic children would be interesting, but it was really not what I'd expected. The plot moves along very linearly with very cliched/unsurprising twists. Not to mention all the soul murdering nature of the suffering. Stephen King is like a sadist who is obsessed with abusing children. I'm really disappointed.
39 people found this review helpful
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Benjamin Thompson
July 28, 2020
I do love a Stephen King book. As I read many of his stories, the eerie part is how some of his ideas could pertain to everyday issues. More of a realistist you could say. I would definitely have given this 5 stars but for the ending of this book. When buildings started lifting off the ground, that was kind of a drop in the suspense, a sort of "huh" moment. But all in all, a very good read! A long simmer of his idea of a long ago Firestarter novel he wrote.
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Kristi Thompson
April 2, 2020
First King book I've read in a long time. I found it very long winded and stale. Mr King has definitely lost his magic. This was like a mishmash of all his other books. That's why it's been awhile since I've read one. Time to retire.
50 people found this review helpful
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About the author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

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