The Institute

1. The Night Knocker 1
Half an hour after Tim Jamieson's Delta flight was scheduled to leave Tampa for the bright lights and tall buildings of New York, it was still parked at the gate. When a Delta agent and a blond woman with a security badge hanging around her neck entered the cabin, there were unhappy, premonitory murmurings from the packed residents of economy class.

"May I have your attention, please!" the Delta guy called.

"How long's the delay gonna be?" someone asked. "Don't sugarcoat it."

"The delay should be short, and the captain wants to assure you all that your flight will arrive approximately on time. We have a federal officer who needs to board, however, so we'll need someone to give up his or her seat."

A collective groan went up, and Tim saw several people unlimber their cell phones in case of trouble. There had been trouble in these situations before.

"Delta Air Lines is authorized to offer a free ticket to New York on the next outbound flight, which will be tomorrow morning at 6:45 AM-"

Another groan went up. Someone said, "Just shoot me."

The functionary continued, undeterred. "You'll be given a hotel voucher for tonight, plus four hundred dollars. It's a good deal, folks. Who wants it?"

He had no takers. The security blond said nothing, only surveyed the crowded economy-class cabin with all-seeing but somehow lifeless eyes.

"Eight hundred," the Delta guy said. "Plus the hotel voucher and the complimentary ticket."

"Guy sounds like a quiz show host," grunted a man in the row ahead of Tim's.

There were still no takers.

"Fourteen hundred?"

And still none. Tim found this interesting but not entirely surprising. It wasn't just because a six forty-five flight meant getting up before God, either. Most of his fellow economy-class passengers were family groups headed home after visiting various Florida attractions, couples sporting beachy-keen sunburns, and beefy, red-faced, pissed-off-looking guys

Stephen King

"A big shank of a book that reminded me instantly of many of the reasons I loved (love?) [King]. His characters are the kind of people who hear the trains in the night. The music is always good. He swings low to the ground. He gets closer to the realities and attitudes of working-class life in America than any living writer I can think of."
-Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Throughout his long career, King has been committed to the bedrock notion that stories matter, that they help us understand both ourselves and the world we inhabit. The Institute, filled as it is with anger, sorrow, empathy and, yes, hope, reiterates that commitment with undiminished power. It is a first-rate entertainment that has something important to say. We all need to listen."
-William Sheehan, The Washington Post

"As consummately honed and enthralling as the very best of [King's] work...How do you maintain your dignity and humanity in an environment designed to strip you of both? That theme, such an urgent one in literature from the 20th century onward, falls well within King's usual purview...Of all the cosmic menaces that King's heroes have battled, [the] slow creep into inhumanity may be the most terrifying yet, because it is all too real."
-Laura Miller, The New York Times Book Review

"The Institute is another winner: creepy and touching and horrifyingly believable, all at once."
-The Boston Globe

"This is King at his best."
-The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Gripping... This is a thriller - and a good one, at that. There's little in the way of King's usual emphasis on the occult beyond the topic of psychic powers, which, according to surveys, as many as 40% of Americans believe are real. But there's no shortage of monsters, that's for sure. They just come in the coldblooded, end-justifies-the-means, laws-don't-apply-to-us human variety. We have no trouble believing that those types of people are real. And they are plenty scary."
-The Minneapolis Star