Image caption Jack Nicholson played Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining

Stephen King's sequel to his horror novel The Shining is to be released on 24 September 2013, 36 years after the original was published.

Doctor Sleep will follow Danny Torrance, the young boy who survived the horrific events of The Shining.

According to King's official website, Dan meets a "very special 12-year-old girl" who he must "save from a tribe of murderous paranormals".

Now a middle-aged man and aided by a prescient cat, he becomes Doctor Sleep.

One of King's most loved works, The Shining was adapted into a 1980 film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

As in the book, the movie followed the Torrance family as they move to the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains.

Jack, a writer, takes a job as a hotel caretaker for a year but becomes possessed by the evil spirits in the building and attacks his family.

The young Danny, who has psychic abilities, eventually manages to escape with his mother Wendy.

According to King's UK publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, Doctor Sleep returns to the "characters and territory" of The Shining.

The book takes up the story of Dan who has been "drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence".

The book opens with him settling in a New Hampshire town and taking a job at a nursing home where his "shining" power helps him comfort the dying.

Known by the local people as "Doctor Sleep", Dan comes into contact with Abra Stone, a 12-year-old who has "the brightest shining ever seen".

Hodder and Stoughton said the story was "an epic war between good and evil" that would "thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining".

Fans posting on the official King website expressed excitement at the news of the follow-up, with one writing that he "can't wait to be scared all over again".