News The Talisman The Third Book in Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Talisman Series Has a Name and Release Date Other Worlds Than These arrives in October By Molly Templeton | Published on February 9, 2026 Photo: Scribner Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Scribner In 1984, Peter Straub and Stephen King published The Talisman, a novel about a 12-year-old boy on a journey to find an object that will save his dying mother. Seventeen years later, in 2001, they published a sequel, Black House, which ended on a cliffhanger. And now, at long last, there’s a third book. Straub died in 2022, but according to Esquire, King “found an old email from his friend that included a tantalizing suggestion for another novel, partly involving the real-life teenage spree killer Charles Starkweather, who terrorized the Midwest in the late 1950s.” When King started working on book three, “So far as it was possible, I wanted to collaborate with Peter. The seed was there, and I channeled Peter throughout like crazy,” he told Esquire. (You can read an excerpt from the novel at that Esquire link.) Other Worlds Than These will arrive October 6th from Scribner. The publisher’s page about this book claims that it works as a standalone read as well as the trilogy’s conclusion. The synopsis says: Other Worlds Than These is the story of Jack Sawyer, whom readers first met when he was twelve, crossing America and “the territories” to save his mother’s life, and met again in Black House, where Jack faces a child killer and the Crimson King (among other evils). In Other Worlds Than These Jack must stop a rampaging gang of infected teenagers from America-side, and the forces of the mysterious Gullet at the edge of Mid-World, before it destroys our world and all worlds. Jack is older now; his Ka-tet (echoing the world of Roland) is fraying; and his task, nearly impossible. The Talisman has never been adapted for TV or feature film; Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers were attached to a series adaptation for Netflix, but that fell apart last year. Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin Television would have co-produced that series, has had the adaptation rights for decades; according to Entertainment Weekly, “he got Universal Pictures to buy him the rights forever — not just an option to adapt, which would have expired after a few years.” Maybe now’s the time, with the series finally about to wrap up.[end-mark] The post The Third Book in Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Talisman Series Has a Name and Release Date appeared first on Reactor.