SE Hinton Books in Order

If you want her classic Tulsa gang stories: The Outsiders  That Was Then, This Is Now  Rumble Fish
If you like small-town coming-of-age tales: Tex  Taming the Star Runner
If you're choosing for a younger child: Big David, Little David  The Puppy Sister
If you're curious about her darker adult work: Hawkes Harbor

S. E. Hinton was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up in a working-class neighborhood that would later shape the streets and characters in her fiction. As a teenager she loved to read but was frustrated that the books she found rarely reflected the rough edges of real teen life. So, while still in high school, she began drafting what would become The Outsiders, the book that would change her life and the young adult shelves.

She attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, where rival cliques and local gang tensions gave her a close-up view of class divides between kids who had money and those who did not. Out of that experience came Ponyboy, the greasers, and the Socs, with Hinton writing much of the manuscript for The Outsiders at 16 and seeing it published in 1967 while she was attending the University of Tulsa. The book's success helped pay for her college education and quietly launched a new era of realistic teen storytelling.

Instead of publishing under her full name, she used her initials at her publisher's suggestion, a simple change that helped male reviewers take a story about working-class boys and gang conflict seriously.

After The Outsiders, Hinton kept returning to Oklahoma teens who feel caught between loyalty and change. In That Was Then, This Is Now, Rumble Fish, Tex, and Taming the Star Runner, she follows boys who are tough on the surface but uneasy about the violence, poverty, and broken families around them. The books share a loose universe and a focus on kids trying to decide whether to repeat the patterns they grew up with or step away from them.

Those stories did not stay on the page. All but Taming the Star Runner were adapted for film in the 1980s, with directors and actors returning again and again to her small-scale dramas about brothers, friends, and street-level feuds. Hinton herself had small cameo roles and helped with screenplays, an unusual level of involvement that kept the movies close to the feeling of the books.

Alongside the grit, she has always had a soft spot for family stories, and in the mid-1990s she turned to younger readers with the picture book Big David, Little David and the chapter book The Puppy Sister, both sparked by her own son, Nick.

Later, Hinton tried something different with Hawkes Harbor, a dark, supernatural adventure aimed at adults, and Some of Tim's Stories, a linked collection about two cousins living with the fallout of a crime. These books keep her interest in damaged families and moral gray areas but shift the focus to older characters and more overtly haunted material. Even as her output slowed, she continued to write on her own schedule rather than chase trends.

Over the years she has been honored with major recognition for her influence on teen literature, including the first Margaret A. Edwards Award and induction into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. Still living in Tulsa, she has spoken often about seeing herself as a reader first and a writer second, someone who wants her stories to feel honest to the kids who pick them up. Her novels, whether they follow greasers in back alleys or kids on lonely ranches, keep drawing new readers because they treat teenage feelings as serious, complicated, and worth the page.