While Strangers Things season three isn't back on Netflix until July, fans have been given a new adventure as a prequel novel has been released.

Penguin Random House and Netflix published the first official Stranger Things novel,  Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds by Gwenda Bond .

Set in 1969, fourteen years before the events of the TV series, the book offers us plenty of shocking secrets and tidbits.

It follows Eleven’s mother Terry Ives as she takes part in the CIA MKUltra program while unknowingly pregnant with Eleven, under the watchful eye of Dr Brenner.

Critically acclaimed fantasy and graphic novelist Gwenda Bond worked closely with the Stranger Things creative team to create this 100% cannon story, and here are some of the exclusive secrets uncovered in the book.

We met Terry Ives

1. We meet Terry Ives

We've heard plenty about Eleven's mother Terry, but we get to meet her in Suspicious Minds. As a college student Terry and her fellow students decide to take part in the experiments to make some extra cash. We did actually see Terry in the TV series, but she was in a catatonic state. 

2. Why did Terry get involved in the MKUltra experiments?

A working student, hard up for cash and eager to get involved in political activism during the height of the Vietnam War, we learn how Terry Ives is lured to take part in the experiments. 

3. Brenner arrives in Hawkins

In the series we see bits and pieces of what Brenner is up to. In the book we learn a bit more about the top secret experiments. Firstly, it involves Terry and the others being given LSD to see if they're capable of remote viewing (astral projection).

Alice sees Eleven

4. Alice's vision of Eleven

Alice also starts having visions, one of which is a recurring image of a young girl with short hair, wearing a hospital gown with a contraption on her head. It's only later she realises she's seeing the future.

5. The Upside Down

Alice, another test subject, is the first to find herself in The Upside Down, or as she calls it The Beneath, when she is experiencing one of her acid induced visions. She catches early sightings of the Demogorgon and Demodogs, but these are future visions.

6. Dr Brenner’s original motivations and how he was almost shut down

In the novel, we see Dr. Brenner’s first attempts at mind control before he uncovers more enticing and powerful potential in Terry Ives and her unborn baby…

7. MK Ultra

Terry's friends cause a diversion so she can sneak into Brenner's office where she finds files labelled MK Ultra. MK Ultra was a real top-secret CIA project that looked at remote viewing, mind control and topics that you'd consider sci-fi and a bit 'out there'.

8. How and when Terry Ives discovers she is pregnant

When Brenner takes blood samples from Terry, he finds something out that not even she knows - she's pregnant. He plans to get her boyfriend drafted and sent away to Vietnam. He then gives her a drug to induce her labour, just when she's trying to scape.

Papa aka Brenner in Stranger Things

9. Eleven’s father and grandparents revealed

...It's probably clear now, but we discover the identity of Eleven’s father, the part Dr Brenner has to play in his fate and whether he may feature in Eleven’s future.

10. Why Terry decides to give Eleven her true name of ‘Jane’

Terry names her daughter Jane after Dr Jane Goodall whose work was just starting to get attention in the late '60s. With a dry sense of humour, Terry picks the name Jane knowing that Dr. Goodall gave the chimpanzees she studied in the wild names instead of numbers -  thumbing her nose at the idea Brenner will eventually study her daughter.

11. Brenner steals Eleven away

We learn how Brenner schemes to steal Eleven away from her mother, how he finally achieves this through insidious means and how this leads to Terry Ives’ search for Eleven and her eventual catatonic state seen in Season 2. 

We won't spoil that!

12. Eight aka Kali's backstory  

Fans will remember Kali aka Eight from the TV series who appeared in the second season.

We see more of what Eight/Kali’s childhood spent in the Hawkins Laboratory was like, how she struck a friendship with Eleven’s mother Terry Ives,  and the true dark nature of her relationship with Dr. Brenner aka. Papa. She was taken from her mother, put in the programme - he thinks her powers are stronger when she is kept apart from the others.

Despite this, Kai is desperate for a friend. Eleven's birth actually gives Brenner an opportunity, to give Kali what she wants, but also to groom another subject.

13. Kali's power

We get a glimpse of Kali's powers too. The book shows the little five year old girl control her ability to create 'lusions', as she calls them. The book ends after Eleven's birth, but we know that Kali escapes at some point thanks to the show.

Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds by Gwenda Bond  is out today (Feb 7) in hardback, £20.