“Environmental nightmares meld with gruesome body horror in Tran’s latest, presenting a young heroine fighting for survival among both mutated foes and human monsters.”
Ever since the hurricane, Mercy Louisiana hasn’t been the same. A strange red algae has bloomed along the coast. Noon and her mother carve out a life among the wreckage by trawling the mutated wildlife lurking in the water and trading with the harbormaster. Noon does her best to keep it all in focus … it helps her cope with what happened at the Cove, and the monster itching at her flesh.
But Mercy has never been a safe place, and now it’s getting worse. People are disappearing. The only clues are whispers of underwater shadows. Best to never answer the knocks at night. The harbormaster demands Noon find and capture the creature responsible for the disappearances. Finding a reluctant ally in the harbormaster’s daughter Covey, they begin to search as another storm approaches.
After all, Noon is no stranger to monsters …
Why we’re excited about this book:
With their second novel, Trang Thanh Tran is once again on the most anticipated horror novels of 2025 lists. Their previous novel, She Is a Haunting, was a New York Times bestseller and a William C. Morris Debut Award 2024 Finalist. Environmental nightmares meld with gruesome body horror in Tran’s latest, presenting a young heroine fighting for survival among both mutated foes and human monsters. Kosoko Jackson (The Forest Demands its Due) calls They Bloom at Night “A literary tour-de-force that should go down in history as a masterclass in atmospheric and terrifying writing.”, Rebecca Mahoney (The Memory Eater) says: “Gorgeous, gruesome, and fiercely cathartic, They Bloom at Night is body horror with a beating heart.”, and Courtney Gould (The Dead and the Dark) says They Bloom at Night is: “A briny, rotting ode to the things we must become to survive and the things we yearn to become when the surviving is over. In elegant, atmospheric prose, Trang Thanh Tran peels back layers of salty skin and sea foam to expose the truth: even when we are wrong, even when we are monstrous, we are whole.”
Releasing from Bloomsbury YA 4 March 2025, They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran (with stunning cover art by Elena Masci) is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
