S. E. Hinton
Personal Information
Description
Susan Eloise Hinton published her first book, The Outsiders, at the age of 17. Her publisher suggested she publish under her initials instead of her feminine so that book reviewers would not dismiss the novel because its author was female, and she continued to publish using her initials because of the success of her first book and because she did not want to be famous. In 1979, Hinton was the first recipient of the Margaret Edwards Award, presented by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the ALA for work which depicts the experiences and emotions of teenagers and is widely accepted by young people. That same year, The Outsiders was named best novel by the New York Times in 1979. Hinton currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband.
Books
Some of Tim's Stories (The Oklahoma Stories & Storytellers Series)
A collection of fourteen short stories by S.E. Hinton that explore the challenges and struggles of adults trapped in lives plagued by missed opportunities.
Taming the Star Runner
Sent to live with his uncle after a violent confrontation with his stepfather, sixteen-year-old Travis, an aspiring writer, finds life in a small Oklahoma town confining until he meets an eighteen-year-old horse trainer named Casey.
Rumble Fish
A junior high school boy idolizes his older brother, the coolest, toughest guy in the neighborhood, and wants to be just like him.
Big David, Little David
When Nick learns that a kindergarten classmate and his own father not only look alike but have the same name, he wonders if they could possibly be the same person.
The outsiders
Two young Britons are offered the opportunity to house-sit a property located near Malaga, on the Costa del Sol coast whilst the owner returns to England for an operation. They jump at the offer and young Jonno hopes that Posie will appreciate the trouble he has gone to, and that their relationship will get more intimate in the anticipated elaborately furnished retirement property. The young couple discover that the property is not the mansion they were expecting but in fact it is rather dowdy and in need of a good spring-clean, which is the first thing they decide they had better do before they feel able to start to relax. The story keeps switching from the back-story of the young couple, to a team from MI5 in London who have been sent unofficially to the Costa del Sol property to observe the Russian Mafia that are living in the adjacent property. The unofficial team of current or retired MI5 staff ('the outsiders') hope to avenge the death of a former colleague who died at the hands of Russian Mafia mobsters. The team are headed up by a lady named Winnie Monk who has a long experience in the field particularly with Russian mobsters but they are very surprised when they discover that the observation post that they have set up in the loft of the Costa del Sol property now has to share facilities with the young couple who were hoping to have an isolated romantic holiday. Another theme explored of this multi-faceted book is the access by MI5 to a young Russian computer geek employed by extremely dangerous and cruel Mafia bosses, who is disillusioned with his employers, who use his skills to subvert and penetrate their competitors' bank accounts and access police databases and there are worries that his attempts to pass information about his employer to the British Secret Service may be uncovered with disastrous and dangerous results. The Secret Service decide to substitute the photography skills of Sparky, one of the watchers of the Russian Mafia, with his previous expertise of assassination. However, they have not brought a sufficiently appropriate gun with them and spend much time arranging to smuggle a suitable high powered marksman's weapon in from a British base in Gibraltar. The novel is a very powerful slow burner that kept me gripped until the final page. The highly detailed plot is softened with some humour. The author writes with an articulate polish that makes descriptions of even very banal things seem almost poetic in their intensity. The author describes the economic shambles of modern Spain and the apparently corrupt mañana, mañana attitude of the authorities in their desire to cope with it; the huge amount of EC funding that built new construction on the Costas that preceded the economic crash and the subsequent abandonment of those sites; the huge amount of money laundering and the population explosion consisting mainly of expatriate gangsters from many countries including the UK, but mainly Russia. [EuroCrime Reviews]
The Puppy Sister
A young boy is astonished when his new puppy begins to change into a human girl who says to him, "I love you, brother!"