The final installment in Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Talisman trilogy is coming later this year, Esquire reports.
Scribner will publish Other Worlds Than These in the fall. The press calls the novel “magnificent, riveting, [and] full of heart and humor.”
King and Straub published their first collaboration, The Talisman, in 1984. The novel follows 12-year-old Jack Sawyer as he goes in search of a magical item that could save the life of his ailing mother, but he must travel through the Territories, a mysterious parallel world, to retrieve it.
The authors followed that up with a sequel, Black House, in 2001, featuring Jack as a retired Los Angeles police detective living in Wisconsin who goes on the trail of a serial killer and finds himself returning to the Territories.
Straub died in 2022, and King later found an old email from him containing a suggestion for what will become the third novel in the series. “So far as it was possible, I wanted to collaborate with Peter,” King told Esquire. “The seed was there, and I channeled Peter throughout like crazy.” He received the blessings of Straub’s wife and children—including Straub’s daughter, Emma, also an author— to write the book.
In Other Worlds Than These, Jack works to stop a marauding gang of teenagers, infected with a mysterious disease, from terrorizing the country. “Reading The Talisman and Black House will enrich Other Worlds Than These but isn’t necessary for your enjoyment of this tale of menace and adventure,” King says.
Other Worlds Than These is slated for publication on Oct. 6.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
