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She Is a Haunting

Trang Thanh Tran

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Instant New York Times and Indie Bestseller! This house eats and is eaten . . ..

A riveting debut from a remarkable new voice! Trang Thanh Tran weaves an impressive gothic mystery in which Jade's father is determined to restore a decrepit home to its former glory and Jade is the only person who feels the soul-crushing devastation of colonialism lingering within its walls. —Angeline Boulley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Firekeeper's Daughter.

A House with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She's always lied to fit in, so if she's straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don't belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can't ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves cryptic warnings: Don't eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home they have always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house's rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

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Posts about this title from Boundless Press

Boundless Press\ \ Jananie\ \ • Sep 11 2023

the 40+ books on my fall TBR 🍁🍂 fall book recommendations ☕️

tell me your fall book recommendations in the comments! 🍁🍂

🎃 books mentioned 🎃

Misc. ↳ rouge ↳ she walks in shadows ↳ silver nitrate

Dark Academia ↳ in these hallowed halls: a dark academia anthology ↳ vita nostra ↳ plain bad heroines

“Classic” horror ↳ rebecca ↳ interview with a vampire ↳ dark tales

Real World Horror ↳ natural beauty ↳ lakewood ↳ her body and other parties ↳ bad cree ↳ weight of blood

Vampires ↳ vampires of el norte ↳ a dowry of blood ↳ masters of death ↳ house of hunger ↳ the book eaters

Haunted House books ↳ a house with good bones ↳ she is a haunting ↳ the hacienda ↳ just like home

Deathly Retellings ↳ a haunting on the hill ↳ the death i gave him ↳ one for my enemy

Cozy fantasies ↳ legends & lattes ↳ the very secret society of irregular witches ↳ venco ↳ emily wilde's encyclopaedia of faeries

Fantasies ↳ nettle & bone ↳ gods of jade and shadow ↳ juniper & thorn ↳the wolf & the woodsman ↳ the bone orchard ↳ the adventures of amina al-sirafi

Other ↳ my dark vanessa ↳ station eleven ↳ glass hotel ↳ sea of tranquility

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💌 for business/sponsorship inquiries please contact eric@smallscreenmarketing.com 💌 for all other inquiries please contact me at thisstoryaintover@gmail.com

faqs 🤍 how do you pronounce your name? - my name is Jananie—pronounced JEN-nuh-nee (like a knee!)

🤍 what's your background/ethnicity/etc? - both my parents are Sri Lankan Tamil, and I was born and raised in Canada!

🤍 what is your job? - aside from youtube I also work in product marketing!

40 books

Posts about this book from across Bindery

Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Mar 16

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Sapphic Speculative Fiction Expands the Imagination\ \ Many people approach queer romance through familiar frameworks. Modern settings. Recognizable social rules. Families that resemble the structures most of us grew up around. I wrote about this a week or two ago, about looking beyond contemporary romance for great sapphic stories.\ \ Those stories matter. They reflect lived experience and present-day struggles.\ \ Yet some of the most thought-provoking sapphic stories appear in places where the rules look completely different.\ \ Speculative fiction offers writers a simple but radical tool. The ability to ask what happens when the world operates under different assumptions?\ \ What happens when gender does not function the way our societies expect?\ \ What happens when colonial hierarchies collapse or never existed in the first place?\ \ What happens when family and community follow different structures?\ \ Sapphic speculative fiction thrives in these questions.\ \ What counts as speculative fiction?\ \ Speculative fiction serves as an umbrella term for stories that imagine worlds different from our own.\ \ Fantasy explores magic, mythology, and alternate societies.\ \ Science fiction looks at future technology, space exploration, and evolving social systems.\ \ Alternate history reimagines historical timelines.\ \ Dystopian and utopian fiction examine political systems taken to extreme outcomes.\ \ Magical realism blends ordinary life with elements that challenge reality.\ \ All of these genres share a common feature. They build worlds where the assumptions we treat as natural begin to shift.\ \ When those foundations move, storytelling changes.\ \ Reimagining gender systems\ \ Many speculative worlds question the rigid gender frameworks common in contemporary culture.\ \ Some settings include fluid understandings of gender. Others remove the strict gender hierarchy. Some societies organize identity through entirely different categories.\ \ When gender works differently, relationships evolve as well.\ \ Characters express attraction without the scripts that dominate many romance narratives. Partnerships develop around compatibility, trust, or shared goals rather than predetermined roles.\ \ For readers, this shift opens new ways of thinking about identity and connection.\ \ Challenging colonial power structures\ \ Speculative fiction often explores empire, conquest, and resistance.\ \ Many worlds center characters fighting against oppressive systems or rebuilding communities after political collapse. Some stories draw inspiration from Indigenous traditions or non-Western perspectives to imagine societies structured around different values.\ \ Within these settings, sapphic characters frequently appear as leaders, rebels, scholars, or explorers. Their relationships unfold inside larger struggles over power, survival, and cultural memory.\ \ Love does not exist in isolation. It grows alongside questions about justice, resistance, and the future of entire communities.\ \ Rethinking family and community\ \ Another striking feature of speculative fiction involves how stories approach family.\ \ The nuclear family model rarely stands as the only option. Characters often live within chosen families, cooperative communities, traveling crews, or political alliances.\ \ Romantic relationships exist inside these broader networks of care.\ \ Two people falling in love may also share responsibilities to their crew, their village, or their resistance movement. Partnership becomes part of a wider web of loyalty and support.\ \ For many readers, this structure feels both imaginative and deeply familiar.\ \ Common tropes in sapphic speculative fiction\ \ Speculative fiction combines romance with adventure and conflict. Certain narrative patterns recur.\ \ A princess guarded by a loyal warrior or knight who begins to question her duty.\ \ Rival soldiers from opposing factions are forced to work together.\ \ A scholar and a fighter navigating a dangerous quest.\ \ Political enemies are forming uneasy alliances during a rebellion.\ \ Explorers encounter unfamiliar worlds and build trust through survival.\ \ These tropes create tension, intimacy, and emotional growth while the larger story unfolds.\ \ Why these stories expand the imagination\ \ Speculative fiction does more than entertain. It shifts perspective.\ \ When readers step into worlds built on different assumptions, the systems shaping their own lives become visible. Gender roles, political hierarchies, and family structures reveal themselves as historical constructs rather than permanent truths.\ \ Sapphic speculative fiction takes this imaginative shift even further.\ \ Queer women appear not as side characters but as central figures in the story of the world itself. They lead revolutions. Build communities. Explore unknown territories. Fall in love while reshaping the societies around them.\ \ These stories ask readers to imagine something larger than representation.\ \ They ask us to imagine entirely different ways people live together.\ \ An invitation to explore\ \ If you have not spent time with sapphic speculative fiction, consider this an invitation.\ \ Explore fantasy worlds where magic reshapes power.\ \ Read science fiction that questions identity in future societies.\ \ Look for stories where love grows alongside resistance, exploration, and discovery.\ \ These books stretch the imagination in ways that linger long after the final page.\ \ I am especially interested in reading more sapphic speculative fiction this year.\ \ Which books expanded your worldview?\ \ Which stories stayed with you long after you finished them?\ \ Here is a list of books I've read and books on my TBR!\ \ \ \ Join for free or login

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Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • May 19 2025

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Women in Horror edition! Drop your score below! Did you know that my publishing imprint on Bindery has expanded? We are publishing books by Indigenous authors AND horror books written by women?! And you can help us, by showing up to support (even as a free follower!) I have almost 6,000 followers here and it would be everything if all of you would go and follow me right now! #womneinhorror #horrorbooks #bookrecs

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Wanderland Reads\ \ Sayer\ \ • Apr 7 2025

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Sapphic Reaching Challenge Recommendations: Horror

Happy Sapphic Sunday! I’m here with another recommendation list for the Sapphic Reading Challenge. If you haven’t joined us yet, you can find the challenge on storygraph and the grids in my highlights.

What books would you add to this list?

#sapphicsunday #sapphicreadingchallenge #sapphicbooks #queerlit #readqueerallyear #diversifyyourshelf #wlw

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Not So Well Read\ \ Courtney\ \ • Jan 2 2025

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Pour one out for all the books I swore I was going to read this year. May they have better odds in 2025.

What books did you condemn to you infinite TBR in 2024?

#bookishreels #bookstack #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #tobereadpile #tbrpile

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Not So Well Read\ \ Courtney\ \ • Apr 22 2024

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Look, I love a good special edition, but a lot of the times the hype and scarcity behind them makes them inaccessible to most readers. Very few people have the ability to pay $50-$100+ to a Pango reseller for an "exclusive" edition of their favorite book.\ \ Here are 8 books in my own collection, as well as a couple of authors/publishers who are creating beautiful books that feel like a "special edition" every time.\ \ \ \ Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson (Hardcover Edition) \ \ As I mentioned on Instagram earlier today, I am an endpapers-fangirl. These gorgeous moody floral are from the hardcover edition of Bloom, the farmer's market horror novella that took the internet by storm earlier this year. This one is from Titan Books and the list price was only $22.99. And while not every book does, a lot of Titan's hardcovers have an extra little touch to them.\ \ \ \ House of Roots and Ruin by Erin A. Craig (Hardcover Edition) \ \ I might be bias, because this is one of my all-time favorite authors and series, but holy moly this book is gorgeous. Not only does it have gorgeous green endpapers, it also has an incredible foil-stamped case, and it still retails for only $19.99. Delacorte Press is another publisher that puts incredible detail into a lot of their YA hardcover editions\ \ \ \ Masters of Death by Olivie Blake (B&N Exclusive, Hardcover Edition) \ \ Olivie Blake is an automatic buy author for me and I always buy in hardcover for the reasons shown above. And while yes, this particular book is an "exclusive edition", all of her books have this level or treatment (and they usually come with illustrations inside as well).This edition still only cost $26.99, I just wanted the white cover to match the One For My Enemy cover. Tor Books is my favorite publisher for many reasons and they are unmatched in the hardcover fantasy realm.\ \ \ \ The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab (Hardcover Edition) \ \ Another Tor Books publication, this book design is relatively simple, but I simply can't resist the little surprise bird skull under the dust jacket. Tor is releasing all 3 of the Shades of Magic in the new cover designs in hardcover later this year, and you better believe I will be buying one of each. And, they're still under $30 each.\ \ \ \ The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (Hardcover Edition) \ \ While this particular photo is of the third book in the Scholomance series, I can attest that each book in the series is equally as gorgeous. Del Rey is know to use world-building maps as their endpapers in a lot of their fantasy releases and we can all agree that this is the superior treatment. You keep being you Del Rey; we love you.\ \ \ \ Ancient Sorceries, Deluxe Edition by Algernon Blackwood (Hardcover Edition) \ \ This little cutie from Pushkin Press, a UK-based independent press, is here to prove that pretty books aren't just reserved for the biggest publishers. They have a delightful little collection of classics that each get the star treatment–all for under $20!\ \ \ \ The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (Hardcover Edition) \ \ Look, no one is surprised that an Erin Morgenstern book looks and feels magical, but I couldn't leave this one out. I love its gorgeous simplicity and the way it mimics an antique foil-embossed cloth cover. Double Day doesn't do a ton of special treatment, and this one is a bit more expensive than a lot of their other books, so I'm not sure if that's due to length or the special design treatment. Still, this edition was the standard edition at only $32.00.\ \ \ \ She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran \ \ Okay, this one is last because it might be cheating. I got this one used, but I'm pretty sure it's the B&N YA Book Club Edition and I'm unsure if the standard editions have these endpapers. I'm a little suspicious, because Bloomsbury isn't known for fanciful book design. They typically only reserve those things for their biggest publications–like SJM releases–and this was a debut author. Regardless, it's absolutely stunning and I wanted to include it here, because even if it is a B&N exclusive, it's still only $18.99.\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login

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After much consideration, these are my favorite reads from 2023. What would you recommend based on these picks? What were your favorite books this year? 📚🪩✨

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