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4.0 

The Institute

By Stephen King
The Institute by Stephen King digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

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).

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11838 Reviews

4.0
Anxious Face with sweat“having read a couple of king books in the past, i feel that the institute is a good example of a standard book written at his practiced hand. it is worth reading if you’re interested in surreal/weird ( the genre ) science fiction & the whole ‘young brilliant minds held in an asylum’ trope! king adds a brutality to the story that i found really engaging, and in tandem with how interesting i found the science/subject itself i was engaged in the story enough to push through it’s slow start. this story reminds me of the short story ‘the people of the pit’ by a. merrit ( published in 1981 i believe ? ). it is a peculiar piece, and i have to wonder if stephan king drew any inspiration from it. regardless, if you’re a fan of pulp science fiction & horror, you’ll likely appreciate this tale!”
Loudly Crying Face“😭 This is just so.....sad. That feeling Luke felt at the end is what I'm feeling ✨EMPTINESS✨. I finished reading this after months because I want to savour every page and not binge read it. This is well written and horrifying. When I say it's Traumatizing, I'm not exaggerating it. I was not prepared for what came at that end. Oh I cried for all those characters that ⚰️🥀.”

About Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy TaleBilly SummersIf It BleedsThe InstituteElevationThe OutsiderSleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of WatchFinders 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 TowerItPet SemataryDoctor 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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