Living a Gothic Heroine’s Nightmare: An Exclusive Guest Post from Trang Thanh Tran, Author of She Is a Haunting, Our March YA Book Club Pick
Hardcover $18.99
She Is a Haunting (Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition)
She Is a Haunting (Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition)
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Hardcover $18.99
This riveting debut will keep you up at night and is perfect for fans of Within These Wicked Walls and White Smoke. This haunted house horror about a girl visiting Vietnam and staying in the French colonial house her Ba is restoring explores themes like queerness, generational trauma, and colonialism, and it will haunt you long after you’ve turned the final page. Keep reading to discover the authors and stories that have inspired Trang Thanh Tran as they set out to write their book.
This riveting debut will keep you up at night and is perfect for fans of Within These Wicked Walls and White Smoke. This haunted house horror about a girl visiting Vietnam and staying in the French colonial house her Ba is restoring explores themes like queerness, generational trauma, and colonialism, and it will haunt you long after you’ve turned the final page. Keep reading to discover the authors and stories that have inspired Trang Thanh Tran as they set out to write their book.
In October 2020, I was living a Gothic heroine’s nightmare. Stuck inside like the rest of the world, I watched the old webs in the corners of my windows go unloved. Even the spiders had needed escape, leaving carcasses that would find their way into She Is a Haunting. I watched my bright hydrangeas — inherited from the previous owner — wither to brown petals, and yet their heads stayed upright through the mild winter.
Paperback $12.99
The Astonishing Color of After
The Astonishing Color of After
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I desperately wanted to be home, somewhere else, but I had no answer for where that was exactly. Writing a ghost story seemed like the perfect escape: make it a fictional character’s problem! But I really wanted it to hurt for you, reader. The first time I felt a piece of my heart on the page was Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. It had blown me away years earlier with its honest, beautiful prose exploring grief and belonging. I sought that same emotional resonance for my main character Jade as she visited Vietnam against her wishes.
I desperately wanted to be home, somewhere else, but I had no answer for where that was exactly. Writing a ghost story seemed like the perfect escape: make it a fictional character’s problem! But I really wanted it to hurt for you, reader. The first time I felt a piece of my heart on the page was Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After. It had blown me away years earlier with its honest, beautiful prose exploring grief and belonging. I sought that same emotional resonance for my main character Jade as she visited Vietnam against her wishes.
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Some Are Always Hungry
Some Are Always Hungry
By Jihyun Yun
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Paperback $17.95
In the fun tradition of tropey horror titles, the novel was originally called The Haunting of Jade Nguyen. As I wrote however, it became a family story. She isn’t the only one haunted or haunting. Jihyun Yun’s poetry collection Some Are Always Hungry was a fixture on my desk and a major source of inspiration because of how it examined immigration, survival, and intergenerational trauma. Each poem was through the lens of food, and that’s how I saw Jade’s story playing out, too, in the greedy French colonial house her dad wants to reclaim.
In the fun tradition of tropey horror titles, the novel was originally called The Haunting of Jade Nguyen. As I wrote however, it became a family story. She isn’t the only one haunted or haunting. Jihyun Yun’s poetry collection Some Are Always Hungry was a fixture on my desk and a major source of inspiration because of how it examined immigration, survival, and intergenerational trauma. Each poem was through the lens of food, and that’s how I saw Jade’s story playing out, too, in the greedy French colonial house her dad wants to reclaim.
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The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
By
Shirley Jackson
Introduction
Laura Miller
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Paperback $17.00
While the show The Haunting of Hill House delivered on the visuals and complex family dynamics I adored, it’s Shirley Jackson’s book that whipped up the perfect claustrophobic environment. Trapping readers with sparing prose that still suggests a house’s malevolent grandeur was a fun challenge while working on this novel. I hope Nhà Hoa makes Hill House proud.
While the show The Haunting of Hill House delivered on the visuals and complex family dynamics I adored, it’s Shirley Jackson’s book that whipped up the perfect claustrophobic environment. Trapping readers with sparing prose that still suggests a house’s malevolent grandeur was a fun challenge while working on this novel. I hope Nhà Hoa makes Hill House proud.
Inspiration can come from many different places, and that’s why I think there’s a horror novel for every kind of reader. Even now my favorite horror novels depend on mood! I reach for The Haunting of Hill House when I want to fall head-first into someone else’s mental breakdown. To be at the edge of my seat, I read Kate Alice Marshall’s Rules for Vanishing. Need a slow-burn forbidden romance in a scary house? Hands down, The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. No novel is more forgiving of my rage than Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed with Us.
She Is a Haunting is about one girl’s — one family’s — desperate attempt to belong while also keeping secret all their fears, desires, and joys. To the Nguyens, loneliness is a gnawing type of hunger. And what won’t you eat when you are hungry?