THE STORM

. Rachel Hawkins

St. Martin's Press

1/6/26

Fiction / Thriller

Hardcover, 288 pages

"A sleek suspense novel...Hawkins shrewdly orchestrates the plot twists in each story line....When the pieces finally click into place, readers will be more than satisfied." 

—Publishers Weekly

Rachel Hawkins is back with a thrilling new gothic suspense set in a Gulf Coast beach motel where hurricane season can be murder.

St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama is famous for three things: the deadly hurricanes that regularly sweep into town, the Rosalie Inn, a century-old hotel that’s survived every one of those storms, and Lo Bailey, the local girl infamously accused of the murder of her lover, political scion Landon Fitzroy, during Hurricane Marie in 1984.

When Geneva Corliss, the current owner of the Rosalie Inn, hears a writer is coming to town to research the crime that put St. Medard’s Bay on the map, she’s less interested in solving a whodunnit than in how a successful true crime book might help the struggling inn’s bottom line. But to her surprise, August Fletcher doesn’t come to St. Medard’s Bay alone. With him is none other than Lo Bailey herself. Lo says she’s returned to her hometown to clear her name once and for all, but the closer Geneva gets to both Lo and August, the more she wonders if Lo is actually back to settle old scores.

As the summer heats up and another monster storm begins twisting its way towards St. Medard’s Bay, Geneva learns that some people can be just as destructive—and as deadly—as any hurricane, and that the truth of what happened to Landon Fitzroy may not be the only secret Lo is keeping.

Dear Reader:



For as long as I can remember, stories of natural disasters have both terrified and fascinated me. For this girl who grew up near the Gulf Coast, nothing captured my imagination like hurricanes, especially after Hurricane Opal roared into my hometown of Dothan, Alabama, in 1995. I can still remember the nervous anticipation in the air as school let out early. My parents and I camped out in our living room that evening, the skies growing darker as we waited and watched the winds grow stronger and the rain louder.

As a character in The Storm says, it’s worse when they come at night.

The Storm is—obviously!—about storms like these, but it’s also about the places that withstand them, and the people who live there knowing that, at any time from June to November, a monster could be gathering steam somewhere out in the ocean, slowly turning their way…

Happy reading, and batten down the hatches!

Rachel Hawkins

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