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Award Winners - - Items tagged as "Female protagonist"

Two Dollar Radio Books Too Loud To Ignore script

As a boutique press, Two Dollar Radio publishes bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.
The latest and greatest from Two Dollar Radio! Books are shown in 'newest to oldest' view, which you can change with the Sort option below.

  • The Book of X QUICK VIEW The Book of X a novel by
    Sarah Rose Etter

    A Best Book of 2019
    Winner: Shirley Jackson Award for Novel

    "Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything."
    —Roxane Gay

    A surreal exploration of one woman’s life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men.

    The Book of X

    a novel by
    Sarah Rose Etter


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    *Winner of the 2019 Shirley Jackson Awards for Novel
    *The Believer Book Awards, 2019: Editors' Longlists in Fiction
    *The Northern California ‘Golden Poppy’ Book Awards 2019, Fiction longlist
    *2020 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Longlist
    *A Best Book of 2019 —Vulture, Entropy, Buzzfeed, Thrillist

    A surreal exploration of one woman’s life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men.

    The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday—school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents—with the surreal—rivers of thighs, men for sale and fields of throats—Cassie’s realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

  • The Hare QUICK VIEW The Hare a novel by
    Melanie Finn

    A Best Book of 2021
    Vermont Book Award, Winner

    "Daring and unputdownable, The Hare is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2021."
    —Jenny Hollander, Marie Claire


    The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, her resilience and personal transformation, of her life under the male gaze, and serves as a striking statement about what it means to be a woman in the world.

    The Hare

    a novel by
    Melanie Finn


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    "Daring and unputdownable, The Hare is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2021."
    —Jenny Hollander, Marie Claire

    "With The Hare, Melanie Finn has written a powerful story of female perseverance, strength, and resilience. This book has rare qualities: beautiful writing while being absolutely unputdownable, and I will be pressing it into the hands of every reader I know." —Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange, Our Endless Numbered Days, and Swimming Lessons

    "This is a page-turner about a tough woman and her con-artist lout of a partner, and I will eat my laptop if it doesn’t get optioned for TV or film the minute it hits bookshelves. It is also woven through with ideas about feminism, parenting, narcissism, and self-sufficiency—a book that is easy to read without being remotely lightweight." —Molly Young, Vulture

    The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, her resilience and personal transformation, of her life under the male gaze, and serves as a striking statement about what it means to be a woman in the world.

    Raised by a stern grandmother to be obedient and obliging in an unremarkable blue-collar town in Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum she meets a worldly man twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England society. Bennett is dashing, knows that “boats” refer to yachts (though you never use the word “yacht”), teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells stories of “Hemingway moments,” of escapades with Truman Capote and Hunter Thompson in exotic locales. Soon, Rosie is living in a boathouse with Bennett on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, and a daughter — Miranda — is born, just as Bennett’s current con goes awry and forces them to abscond in the middle of the night to the untamed wilderness of Northern Vermont.

    Almost immediately, Rosie and Miranda are left at an uninsulated cabin without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so Bennett can tend to a teaching job that may or may not exist at a local university. Rosie is forced to survive on her own, to care for her young daughter, to learn how to stack firewood, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in the forest. As Rosie and Miranda’s life gradually begins to normalize, Bennett and his cons catch up to him, and Rosie is forced to ultimately confront Bennett’s simmering obsession and malevolence.

    The Hare is an astounding new literary thriller from a celebrated author at the height of her storytelling powers.

  • The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish QUICK VIEW The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish a novel by
    Katya Apekina

    A Best Book of 2018
    L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist

    "It's a stunningly accomplished book, and Apekina isn't afraid to grab her readers by the hand and take them to some very dark and very beautiful places."
    —Michael Schaub, NPR


    Powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can’t, and shouldn’t, have to themselves.

    The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

    a novel by
    Katya Apekina


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
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    *A Best Book of 2018 —Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed News, Entropy, LitReactor

    It’s 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother Marianne dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother’s dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success.

    The girls, grieving and homesick, are at first wary of their father’s affection, but soon Mae and Edie’s close relationship begins to fall apart—Edie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mother’s downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing and destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, and as the history of Dennis and Marianne’s romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further.

    Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can’t, and shouldn’t, have to themselves. In this captivating debut, Katya Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession.

  • Alligator and Other Stories QUICK VIEW Alligator and Other Stories a collection of stories by
    Dima Alzayat

    A Best Book of 2020
    PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award Finalist
    Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Finalist
    The Story Prize Longlist
    Arab American Book Awards, Honorable Mention

    "The richly detailed short fictions in this debut from a Damascus-born scribe form an intricate, breathtaking mosaic of modern Muslim life."
    —Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine

    Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.

    Alligator and Other Stories

    a collection of stories by
    Dima Alzayat


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
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    "Alzayat’s slim, powerful debut collection showcases the author’s deep empathy and imagination in stories about grief, assimilation, and trauma... This intelligent collection is a force to be reckoned with."
    Publishers Weekly, starred review

    *2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection, Finalist.
    *2021 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2021, Longlist.

    "A stellar debut... Alzayat manages to execute a short but thoughtful meditation on the spectrum of race in America from Jackson’s presidency to present." —Colin Groundwater, GQ

    "The richly detailed short fictions in this debut from a Damascus-born scribe form an intricate, breathtaking mosaic of modern Muslim life." —Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine

    The award-winning stories in Dima Alzayat’s collection are luminous and tender, whether dealing with a woman performing burial rites for her brother in “Ghusl,” or a great-aunt struggling to explain cultural identity to her niece in “Once We Were Syrians.”

    Alzayat’s stories are rich and relatable, chronicling a sense of displacement through everyday scenarios. There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.

    The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.

    Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.

  • The Orange Eats Creeps New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING) QUICK VIEW The Orange Eats Creeps New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING) a novel by
    Grace Krilanovich

    A Best Book of 2010
    National Book Foundation '5 Under 35' Award

    "Krilanovich's work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins." —Rachel Syme, NPR


    Coming Soon!

    The Orange Eats Creeps New Classics Edition (FORTHCOMING)

    a novel by
    Grace Krilanovich


    $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, announces plans to adapt The Orange Eat Creeps to film!

    *National Book Foundation '5 Under 35' Award
    *NPR Best Books of 2010
    *The Believer Book Award Finalist
    *Indie Bookseller's Choice Awards Finalist

    A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along “The Highway That Eats People,” stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks’ “Bob” and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.

  • Virtuoso QUICK VIEW Virtuoso a novel by
    Yelena Moskovich

    A Best Book of 2020
    Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Finalist

    "A hint of Lynch, a touch of Ferrante, the cruel absurdity of Antonin Artaud, the fierce candour of Anaïs Nin, the stylish languor of a Lana del Rey song...” —Shahidha Bari, The Guardian

    With a distinctive prose flair and spellbinding vision, Virtuoso is a story of love, loss, and self-discovery that heralds Yelena Moskovich as a brilliant and one-of-a-kind visionary.

    Virtuoso

    a novel by
    Yelena Moskovich


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    "A hint of Lynch, a touch of Ferrante, the cruel absurdity of Antonin Artaud, the fierce candour of Anaïs Nin, the stylish languor of a Lana del Rey song."
    The Guardian

    As Communism begins to crumble in Prague in the 1980s, Jana’s unremarkable life becomes all at once remarkable when a precocious young girl named Zorka moves into the apartment building with her mother and sick father. With Zorka's signature two-finger salute and abrasive wit, she brings flair to the girls’ days despite her mother’s protestations to not “be weird.” But after scorching her mother’s prized fur coat and stealing from a nefarious teacher, Zorka suddenly disappears.

    Meanwhile in Paris, Aimée de Saint-Pé married young to an older woman, Dominique, an actress whose star has crested and is in decline. A quixotic journey of self-discovery, Virtuoso follows Zorka as she comes of age in Prague, Wisconsin, and then Boston, amidst a backdrop of clothing logos, MTV, computer coders, and other outcast youth. But it isn’t till a Parisian conference hall brimming with orthopedic mattresses and therapeutic appendages when Jana first encounters Aimée, their fates steering them both to a cryptic bar on the Rue de Prague, and, perhaps, to Zorka.

    With a distinctive prose flair and spellbinding vision, Virtuoso is a story of love, loss, and self-discovery that heralds Yelena Moskovich as a brilliant and one-of-a-kind visionary.

  • Night Rooms QUICK VIEW Night Rooms a collection of essays by
    Gina Nutt

    A Best Book of 2021
    2022 IPPY Medalist for Essay

    "[Nutt] spins a striking tale of survival and loss in this haunting essay collection. Nutt uses familiar tropes from horror films as a window into her thinking... Lovers of the personal essay will be thrilled by this innovative collection."
    Publishers Weekly


    Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.

    Night Rooms

    a collection of essays by
    Gina Nutt


    $ 8.99 $ 9.99
    View full product details →

    Night Rooms is a poetic, intimate collection of personal essays that weaves together fragmented images from horror films and cultural tropes to meditate on anxiety and depression, suicide, body image, identity, grief, and survival.

    Whether competing in shopping mall beauty pageants, reflecting on childhood monsters and ballet lessons, or recounting dark cultural ephemera while facing grief and authenticity in the digital age, Gina Nutt’s shifting style echoes the sub-genres that Night Rooms highlights—spirit-haunted slow burns, possession tales, slashers, and revenge films with a feminist bent.

    Refracting life through the lens of horror films, Night Rooms masterfully leaps between reality and movies, past and present—because the “final girl’s” story is ultimately a survival story told another way.

  • New Animal QUICK VIEW New Animal a novel by
    Ella Baxter

    Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist

    "For fans of Sally Rooney’s brand of millennial malaise and Six Feet Under’s tragicomic take on the mortuary business, New Animal is at turns graphic, raw and tender—a wholly human exploration of the Venn diagram of emotion."
    —Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow


    New Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.

    New Animal

    a novel by
    Ella Baxter


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
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    "A story about sex, connection and, comically, the Tasmanian BDSM scene, that is by turns profound and funny."
    —Kylie Northover, The Age

    New Animal is a poignant, darkly comedic look at human connection from a biting and original new voice in Ella Baxter.

    Amelia Aurelia is approaching thirty and her closest relationships — other than her mother — are through her dating apps. She works at the family mortuary business as a cosmetic mortician with her eccentric step-father and older brother, whose throuple’s current preoccupation is with what type of snake to adopt. When Amelia’s affectionate mother passes away without warning, she is left without anchor. Fleeing the funeral, she seeks solace with her birth-father in Tasmania and stumbles into the local BDSM community, where her riotous attempts to belong are met with confusion, shock, and empathy.

    Hilarious and heartfelt, New Animal reveals hard-won truths as Amelia struggles to find her place in the world without her mother, with the help of her two well-intentioned fathers and adventures at the kink club.

  • Seeing People Off QUICK VIEW Seeing People Off a novel by
    Jana Beňová
    Translated by Janet Livingstone

    Winner: European Union Prize for Literature

    "A fascinating novel. Fans of inward-looking postmodernists like Clarice Lispector will find much to admire here."
    —NPR

    Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature, Seeing People Off is the quirky, radical English-language by Slovakia's most acclaimed novelist.

    Seeing People Off

    a novel by
    Jana Beňová
    Translated by Janet Livingstone


    $ 7.99 $ 9.99
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    *Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature.
    "Beňová is at her best when she's funny, and her sense of humor tends toward the dry and the dark. Seeing People Off is a fascinating novel. Fans of inward-looking postmodernists like Clarice Lispector will find much to admire here."
    —NPR

    There is a liveliness and effervescence to Jana Beňová’s prose that is magnetic. Whether addressing the loneliness of relationships or the effectiveness of rat poison, her voice and observations call to mind the verve and sophistication of Renata Adler or Rosalyn Drexler, while remaining utterly singular.
    Seeing People Off follows Elza and Ian, a young couple living in a humongous apartment complex outside Bratislava where the walls play music and talk, and time is immaterial.
    Drawing on her memories, everyday interactions, observations of post-socialist realities, and Elza’s attraction to actor Kalisto Tanzi, Seeing People Off is a kaleidoscopic, poetic, and deeply funny portrait of a relationship.