Doctor Sleep

King's sequel follows Danny Torrance forty years after the Overlook, now a middle-aged hospice worker fighting a quiet war with alcoholism. When a girl named Abra reaches out to him telepathically after witnessing a child's murder by the True Knot — a cult that survives by consuming children's psychic energy — Danny has to decide whether he has anything left to fight with. The recovery arc is the emotional spine, and King handles it with unexpected tenderness. The True Knot make for genuinely unnerving villains. That said, the violence directed at children is graphic and disturbing, the pacing sags in the middle third, and this is adult horror through and through. Won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award — it earns that recognition, but know what you're getting into.