The Shining sequel due in 2013

London - More than three decades after The Shining was first published, the sequel to Stephen King's classic horror novel is finally coming out next year.

Doctor Sleep is due for publication on 24 September 2013, the U.S. author said on his website.

The original book was published in 1977, and its success helped establish King's fame as a horror novelist.

"Scribner and Hodder & Stoughton have established 24 September as the official first publication date for Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining," King said on his website.

Murderous paranormals

In 1980, The Shining was adapted into a film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson in the role of Jack Torrance, the troubled writer who moves his wife and psychic son, Danny, to the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains.

In the sequel, Dan Torrance, no longer a boy but a middle-aged man, is still haunted by his father's legacy and the horrific childhood year he spent at the Overlook Hotel, according to a synopsis of the book posted on the website.

He uses his gift - the shining - to comfort the dying in a New Hampshire town but his life is upset when he meets a 12-year-old girl who also has the shining and whom he "must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals," the website said.

King has written some 50 novels, including Carrie, The Dead Zone and Misery.