The Institute: A Novel

Stephen King

Sep 2019 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Santino Fontana

About this audiobook

2020 THRILLER/SUSPENSE AUDIE AWARD WINNER!

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

I own the novel, you know the actual book that you turn pages? I can tell you this Stephen King is the only author in America now that Anne Rice is departed, may she rest in peace, who could take the event of a single pea rolling off your plate onto the table and turn it into six chapters. He is long-winded, unfortunately for trees in the world, (more pages more wood) By the time you get through the book you forgot what you read, your mind gets tired.

Went in expecting greatness, left being grateful it was over.. Didnt really strike any realistic terror. Took 3/4 of the book to really get any solid information on what was going on, and upon the reveal it was very anti-climactic.. The Institute doctors were not believable characters, and neither for that matter were the children that were kidnapped.. Would have expected more of a fight from the kids, but it seemed they were too unimaginative to devise even the simplest of plans for escape..

Usually I really like his books. This one was a bit different....even the cadence of the story was different from a lot of his other books. Don't get me wrong though man is a wonderful writer.

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.