Stephen King’s Bag of Bones is the 23rd book to be banned in all of Utah’s public schools, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
King’s novel, published in 1998 by Scribner, tells the story of novelist Mike Noonan, who is grieving the death of his wife, and travels to a haunted Maine summer house in a town run by a scheming millionaire. He falls for a widowed mother who lives in the town.
The novel was banned under the Utah law H.B. 29, which went into effect in 2024. Shortly after the law was passed, the state’s board of education banned 13 books, including six romantasy novels by Sarah J. Maas, Forever… by Judy Blume, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur.
Since then, the list of banned books has grown to 23. Last month, the state banned Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West from schools statewide.
The bans have sparked a lawsuit from the ACLU of Utah on behalf of Kurt Vonnegut’s estate; authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed; and two unnamed Utah high school students. Earlier this month, the estate of Maya Angelou joined the lawsuit; her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been banned in two school districts in Utah. Under the state’s law, if another district bans the book, it will be removed from all schools statewide.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
