Hawkes Harbor

Some monsters hide behind fangs. Others wear a friendly face.

Published in 2004—35 years after The Outsiders—Hawkes Harbor was S.E. Hinton’s first novel explicitly for adults. And it showed. Darker, more psychological, tinged with horror and gothic strangeness, it veered away from the raw realism of her earlier work into territory that was equal parts Bram Stoker and Stephen King.

But make no mistake—this wasn’t Hinton abandoning her roots. Hawkes Harbor still carries her signature soul: an outcast searching for belonging, a brutal past that won’t stay buried, and the aching need for redemption. What changed was the form. The shadows got deeper. The wounds, older. The monsters, more literal.

It was a bold pivot—and one that proved Hinton’s power was never just in genre. It was in truth.

The Story

Jamie Sommers has seen things. Done things. A former orphan turned sailor turned smuggler, Jamie’s life is a storm of bad decisions and worse luck. But when he’s hired to rob a crypt in the sleepy seaside town of Hawkes Harbor, he awakens something ancient—something that doesn’t stay buried.

His employer, it turns out, isn’t exactly alive. And what begins as a horror story slowly becomes something stranger: a friendship. A co-dependence. A study in power, addiction, and the blurry line between monster and man.

As Jamie spirals into madness—and back out again—the novel unfolds in fragments: asylum records, memory, violence, and small mercies. Hawkes Harbor isn’t a vampire tale. It’s a trauma tale in disguise. And like Jamie, you may not fully understand what’s happening… but you’ll feel it in your bones.