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Frontpage - - Items tagged as "Male protagonist"

  • Crapalachia New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING) QUICK VIEW Crapalachia New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING) a memoir by
    Scott McClanahan

    A Best Book of 2013
    "[McClanahan] aims to
    lasso the moon."
    New York Times Book Review

    An endearing and haunting coming-of-age story that announces McClanahan as a resounding talent. Coming Soon!

    Crapalachia New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING)

    a memoir by
    Scott McClanahan


    $ 8.99 $ 10.00
    View full product details →

    *One of the Best Books of 2013The Millions, Flavorwire, Dazed & Confused, The L Magazine, Time Out Chicago

    "McClanahan's prose is miasmic, dizzying, repetitive. A rushing river of words that reflects the chaos and humanity of the place from which he hails. [McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon... He is not a writer of half-measures. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger."
    Allison Glock, New York Times Book Review

     

    Synopsis

    Crapalachia is a portrait of Scott McClanahan’s formative years, coming of age in rural West Virginia, during a stretch of time where he was deeply influenced by his Grandma Ruby and Uncle Nathan, who suffered from cerebral palsy. 

    Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana. 

    Beyond the artistry, there is an optimism, a genuine love for people and the past and memories. Even more, there is a grasp to bridge the disconnect between reader and writer, for McClanahan’s stories to bind us closer to one another.

  • Other Minds and Other Stories QUICK VIEW Other Minds and Other Stories a collection of stories by
    Bennett Sims

    November 2023!

    “[Sims is] kind of like if Alfred Hitchcock and Brian Evenson raised a baby with David Foster Wallace and Nicholson Baker. Sims should be a household name in horror.”
    —Carmen Maria Machado, LitHub


    From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection.

    Other Minds and Other Stories

    a collection of stories by
    Bennett Sims


    $ 8.99 $ 9.99
    View full product details →

    From the award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, a brilliant, anxious, and hilarious new collection.

    A man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and dread. A well-meaning locavore tries to butcher his backyard chickens humanely, only to find himself absorbed into the absurd violence of the pecking order. A student applying for a philosophy fellowship struggles to project himself into the thoughts of his hypothetical judges, becoming increasingly possessed and overpowered by the problem of other minds. And in “The Postcard,” a private detective is hired to investigate a posthumous message that a widower has seemingly received from his dead wife, leading him into a foggy landscape of lost memories, shifting identities, and strange doublings.

    Cerebral and eerie, captivating and profound, these thirteen stories expertly guide us through the paranoia and obsession of everyday horrors, not least the horrors of overthinking what other people might be thinking. With all of Sims’s trademark virtuosity, innovation, and wit, Other Minds and Other Stories continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

  • Pages of Mourning (FORTHCOMING) QUICK VIEW Pages of Mourning (FORTHCOMING) a novel by
    Diego Gerard Morrison

    May 2024!

    "Very funny and very sad and very, very smart. Unafraid to make his fiction work on and around questions of unambiguous gravity, Morrison never forgets the importance, indeed the power, in the endeavor of play."
    —Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie


    Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.

    Coming Soon!

    Pages of Mourning (FORTHCOMING)

    a novel by
    Diego Gerard Morrison


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    A daring, captivating, darkly funny novel that grapples with uncertainty and loss in a land of violence and superstition, while questioning whether Magical Realism as a genre is capable of confronting the brutal dissonance of a country that awaits the return of the missing while not wholly acknowledging their death.

    Pages of Mourning is a stunning achievement, a pioneering and inventive novel that confronts family history, creativity, Magical Realism, and the impact of violence from Mexico’s drug war, by a magnificent new talent in Diego Gerard Morrison.

  • The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos QUICK VIEW The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos a novel by
    Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya

    "There’s a warmth and solemnity to Gregorio’s voice, as he reflects on death and strain, and the almost inarticulable woe of being an immigrant in the States post-2016. Restrepo Montoya, with poignancy, precision, and subtle force, explores the choices that lead us to the places we end up, and what we carry with us in memory and in action."
    —Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe


    Entrancing and sentimental, told with wit and sharp insight, The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos examines the joys and traumas of the Latinx American experience through the lens of a young man awakening to the nuances of identity, love, colonization, and home.

    The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos

    a novel by
    Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    "Prescient and timeless, dealing with the inseparability of life and decay, this story, through it all, allowed me to sit deeply with love, family, and forgiveness. Pay attention, a refreshingly honest and singular voice has arrived."
    —Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood Heat

    Entrancing and sentimental, told with wit and sharp insight, The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos examines the joys and traumas of the Latinx American experience through the lens of a young man awakening to the nuances of identity, love, colonization, and home.

  • The Red-Headed Pilgrim QUICK VIEW The Red-Headed Pilgrim a novel by
    Kevin Maloney

    A Best Book of 2023

    "Somewhere between the hysterical realism of Zadie Smith and the sexy, witty misfits of a Tom Robbins novel."
    —Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books


    Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, The Red-Headed Pilgrim is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order).

    The Red-Headed Pilgrim

    a novel by
    Kevin Maloney


    $ 8.99 $ 9.99
    View full product details →

    "The Red-Headed Pilgrim is a revelation that achieves starry dynamo-level energy from the jump. Maloney's prose is sharp and vivid, full of trippy precision, and his story is funny, wild, painful and wise."
    —Sam Lipsyte, author of Hark and The Ask

    The Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and maybe bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it.

  • They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us QUICK VIEW They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us a collection of essays by
    Hanif Abdurraqib

    Hardcover: Nov 2022!

    A Best Book of 2017
    "Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him."
    —Greil Marcus, Village Voice


    In this collection of essays, Hanif Abdurraqib, acclaimed poet and cultural critic, grapples with a storm cloud of confounding emotions with prose that is immediate, personal, poetic, sometimes funny and always deeply touching.

    They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

    a collection of essays by
    Hanif Abdurraqib


    $ 8.99 $ 9.99
    View full product details →

    *Best Books of 2017 —NPR, BuzzfeedPaste MagazineEsquireChicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of BooksThe Los Angeles ReviewMichigan Daily
    *American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
    *Midwest Indie Bestseller

    In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

  • What We Tried to Bury Grows Here (FORTHCOMING) QUICK VIEW What We Tried to Bury Grows Here (FORTHCOMING) a novel by
    Julian Zabalbeascoa

    November 2024!

    What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a startling book, beautiful and horrific, that navigates the complexities of Basque Country during the Spanish Civil War, in which fascism and communism, regionalism and nationalism, and faith and skepticism do battle across a brilliantly evoked, suffering landscape."
    —Phil Klay, author of Redeployment and Missionaries


    A masterly crafted and haunting tale of survival, longing, and empathy, set during the Spanish Civil War. Coming Soon!

    What We Tried to Bury Grows Here (FORTHCOMING)

    a novel by
    Julian Zabalbeascoa


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    Julian Zabalbeascoa is a fierce and assured new talent, and <i>What We Tried to Bury Grows Here</i> is a remarkable feat of research and imagination, as well as a transcendent literary accomplishment.

    In late 1936, eighteen-year-old Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village in Northern Spain, spurred to join the fight to preserve his country’s democracy from the insurrectionists by the rousing words of a political essayist. Months earlier, Spanish generals launched a military coup to overthrow Spain’s newly elected left-wing government. They assumed the population would welcome the coup, but throughout the country people like Isidro remained loyal to the ideals of democracy, and the Spanish Civil War began in bloody earnest.

    In Bilbao, Mariana raises her two young children while, with her writing, she decries the fascist-backed coup and their German and Italian allies, imploring the world to support democracy. As the Nationalist forces assault the country, Mariana and Isidro’s lives intersect fleetingly, yet in meaningful and lasting ways.

    Through a chorus of voices—a female soldier in an all-male battalion, a reluctant conscript recently emigrated from Cuba, a young girl whose parents have abandoned her in order to fight against the fascists, among others—we follow Isidro and Mariana as they struggle to maintain their humanity in a country determined to tear itself apart.

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Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore. Check out the ABOUT US section to read more...

Radio Waves daily blog by Two Dollar Radio indie book publisher

Latest posts

  • Q+A with Zachary Pace about I Sing to Use the Waiting

    On January 23, 2024, we're thrilled to release Zachary Pace's debut book, I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am. With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear... Read more →

  • Q+A with Christine Lai about Landscapes

    We're tremendously excited to share the news that on September 12, 2023, we will be publishing Landscapes, a debut novel by Christine Lai that brilliantly explores memory, empathy, preservation, and art as an instrument for recollection and renewal.In the English... Read more →

  • Q+A with Bennett Sims about Other Minds and Other Stories

    Bennett Sims' writing has won the Rome Prize for Literature and the Bard Fiction Prize. For Bookforum, Tony Tulathimutte called Sims “possibly the smartest and most inventive writer of his... generation,” while for LitHub Carmen Maria Machado says Sims is... Read more →