Hawkes Harbor »

The legendary author of The Outsiders (1967), That Was Then This Is Now (1971), Rumble Fish (1975), Tex (1979), S.E. Hinton is acclaimed as one of the most provocative, best known and best selling young adult authors of all time. More than thirty years after its publication The Outsiders continues to appear on such bestseller lists as USA Today. And in PW's recently published "All-Time Bestelling Children's Books" (paperbacks) selling over 10,000,000 copies since its first publication, The Outsiders takes the number two position flanked by E.B. White's Charlotte's Web in first position and Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing in third. Hinton's gritty and powerful novels have also inspired four major motion pictures. She lives in her home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

An orphan and a bastard, Jamie Sommers grew up knowing he had no hope of heaven. Conceived in adultery and born in sin, Jamie was destined to repeat the sins of his parents -or so the nuns told him. And he proved them right. Taking to sea, Jamie sought out danger and adventure in exotic ports all over the world as a smuggler, gunrunner-and murderer. Tough enough to handle anything, he's survived foreign prisons, pirates, and a shark attack. But in a quiet seaside town in Delaware, Jamie discovered something that was enough to drive him insane-and change his life forever. For it was in Hawkes Harbor that Jamie came face to face with the ultimate evil....

Publishers Weekly

Erasing age and genre barriers, prize-winning, bestselling YA author Hinton turns out a dark, funny, scary, suspenseful tale that will entertain mainstream and adventure/horror readers alike. Jamie Sommers is orphaned at the age of eight in 1950 and sent to live with some nasty nuns until graduating as a troubled young man to a life at sea. After surviving a number of life-threatening adventures in exotic ports, he ends up in the small town of Hawkes Harbor on the Delaware coast, where he stumbles into a situation so dire his entire life is changed in a manner of minutes. His new employer, the mysterious Grenville Hawke, lord of Hawkes Hall, known to Jamie as It, the Thing and the Vampire, almost kills Jamie, then goes on to enslave him for years to come. Moving back and forth through time, Hinton twists and shapes her bleak material until the story and the reader's expectations have been turned upside down. This is an adult novel, meaning that Hinton gets to write sex scenes and use the word fuck when she wants to, but the basic elements that made her 30-year-old book The Outsiders a long-time bestseller are present in this rousing read. This is a contemporary Treasure Island with a genre-bending twist. Agent, Elizabeth Harding at Curtis Brown. (Sept.) Forecast: Booksellers should have success hand-selling to grown-up Hinton fans; older YA readers will enjoy the novel, too. With sufficient promo and word of mouth, this could hit national lists. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.