Stephen King's sequel to his blockbuster 1977 horror novel The Shining will be released in January.

The novel, titled Doctor Sleep, has for a protagonist Dan Torrance, the grownup Danny Torrance of The Shining.

In The Shining, the Torrance family moves to the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies so that dad Jack can act as its winter caretaker. The Overlook, which is closed for the off-season, has a sinister past and feeds on Danny's psychic abilities - or "shining" - to slowly drive his alcoholic father homicidally insane.

The novel was, of course, the basis for a 1980 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall as Danny's parents. Though the movie is one of the best-known horror films of all time, King himself was dissatisfied with it, as it departed from the plot of his novel. He wrote the teleplay for a 1997 TV miniseries that more closely followed his story and starred Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay.

According to King's website, Doctor Sleep is the story of Danny who, haunted by his past, has spent his adulthood drifting. Now middle-aged, Dan settles in an AA community and gets a job at a nursing home. He uses his "shining" ability to help patients find peace as they depart this life, and earns himself the nickname that is the book's title.

Spoiling everything, however, is the True Knot, a cult of semi-immortals that travels the country preying on children with Dan's ability. The children's powers feed the cultists, prolonging their lives. When Dan meets Abra Stone, a pre-teen girl with the shining power, he must save her from the True Knot.

King's website calls Doctor Sleep "a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon."

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