New Releases - - Items tagged as "Female protagonist"

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.
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QUICK VIEW She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist
2022 Stella Prize, Longlist"In turns devastating and hilarious, Clark’s exceptional debut collection cuts right to the emotional core of its characters and their conflicts in stories that examine Asian identity, familial relationships, climate anxiety, and gender with an astonishing sense of nuance and clarity."
—Publishers Weekly, starred
With an unforgettable voice and exuberant wit, She Is Haunted is a masterful debut exploring issues of identity, connection, and loss, told with remarkable grace and assurance by Chinese/American/Australian author, Paige Clark.
She Is Haunted
a collection of stories by
Paige Clark
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"She Is Haunted is electrically original in both prose style and energy. Fans of inventive fiction such as Elizabeth Tan’s recent Readings Prize-winning Smart Ovens for Lonely People or Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties will find much to admire about She Is Haunted, but this collection will also resonate with anyone drawn to stories of identity and connection, especially female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. An absolute pleasure to read."
—Stella Charls, bookseller at Readings CarltonA ballerina nurses an injured leg and struggles to learn Cantonese while her husband dances on an international tour of Don Quixote with a new female lead; a mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own hair begins falling out; a woman undergoes brain surgery in order to live more comfortably in extreme temperatures; a woman attempts to physically transform into her dead husband so that she does not have to grieve.
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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
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"A story about sex, connection and, comically, the Tasmanian BDSM scene, that is by turns profound and funny."
—Kylie Northover, The AgeNew 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. -
QUICK VIEW The Underneath
a novel by
Melanie Finn
"Finn is a remarkably confident and supple storyteller."
—New York Times
With the assurance and grace of her acclaimed novel The Gloaming—which earned her comparisons to Patricia Highsmith—Melanie Finn returns with a precisely layered and tense new literary thriller that travels from the Northeast Kingdom to remote Africa. The Underneath
a novel by
Melanie Finn
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99With the assurance and grace of her acclaimed novel The Gloaming—which earned her comparisons to Patricia Highsmith—Melanie Finn returns with a precisely layered and tense new literary thriller.
The Underneath follows Kay Ward, a former journalist struggling with the constraints of motherhood. Along with her husband and two children, she rents a quaint Vermont farmhouse for the summer. The idea is to disconnect from their work-based lifestyle—that had her doggedly pursuing a genocidal leader of child soldiers known as General Christmas, even through Kay's pregnancy and the birth of their second child—in an effort to repair their shaky marriage.
It isn't long before Kay's husband is called away and she discovers a mysterious crawlspace in the rental with unsettling writing etched into the wall. Alongside some of the house's other curiosities and local sleuthing, Kay is led to believe that something terrible may have happened to the home's owners.
Kay's investigation leads her to a local logger, Ben Comeau, a man beset with his own complicated and violent past. A product of the foster system and life-long resident of the Northeast Kingdom, Ben struggles to overcome his situation, and to help an abused child whose addict mother is too incapacitated to care about the boy's plight.
The Underneath is an intelligent and considerate exploration of violence—both personal and social—and whether violence may ever be justified. -
QUICK VIEW I Will Die in a Foreign Land
a novel by
Kalani Pickhart
A Best Book of 2021
Winner: 2022 Young Lions Fiction Award"Since 1991, Ukraine has experienced three revolutions, and Pickhart elegantly captures how these events build up inside a person, giving many Ukrainians an acute awareness of the self as both agent and consequence of history."
—Sonya Bilocerkowycz, The Los Angeles Review of Books
An especially moving story of quiet beauty and love in a time of terror, I Will Die in a Foreign Land is an ambitious and intimate portrait of human perseverance and empathy following four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests.
I Will Die in a Foreign Land
a novel by
Kalani Pickhart
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"Kalani Pickhart's I Will Die in a Foreign Land is of the best kind of protest novels: one that makes you cry, and then makes you mad as hell. It is so far the best artistic treatment of the Euromaidan and Crimean situation, at turns tense, melancholy, and over-abundantly compassionate. This book is both the napalm and the bandages in one."
—Conor Hultman, Square Books (Oxford, MS)In 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring premiered at the new Théâtre de Champs-Elysées in Paris. The work so perplexed audiences that a riot broke out. “Only a Russian could do that,” says Aleksandr Ivanovich. “Only a Russian could make the whole world go mad.”
A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych’s failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir Putin and Russia. The peaceful protests turned violent when military police shot live ammunition into the crowd, killing over a hundred civilians.
I Will Die in a Foreign Land follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests. Katya is a Ukrainian-American doctor stationed at a makeshift medical clinic in St. Michael’s Monastery; Misha is an engineer originally from Pripyat, who has lived in Kyiv since his wife’s death from radiation sickness; Slava is a fiery young activist whose past hardships steel her determination in the face of persecution; and Aleksandr Ivanovich, a former KGB agent, climbs atop a burned-out police bus at Independence Square and plays the piano.
As Katya, Misha, Slava, and Aleksandr’s lives become intertwined, they each seek their own solace during an especially tumultuous and violent period. The story is also told by a chorus of voices that incorporates folklore and narrates a turbulent Slavic history.
While unfolding an especially moving story of quiet beauty and love in a time of terror, I Will Die in a Foreign Land is an ambitious, intimate, and haunting portrait of human perseverance and empathy.
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QUICK VIEW A Mouthful of Air
a novel by
Amy Koppelman
Now a major motion picture starring Amanda Seyfried and Finn Wittrock!
"...[a] novel that quietly builds suspense to the last page."
—Dallas Morning News
Compared to seminal feminist works such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, A Mouthful of Air is a powerful, tragic statement on motherhood, family, and survival.
A Mouthful of Air
a novel by
Amy Koppelman
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 15.99"...[a] novel that quietly builds suspense to the last page."
—Dallas Morning NewsCompared to seminal feminist works such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, A Mouthful of Air is a powerful, tragic statement on motherhood, family, and survival.
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QUICK VIEW A Door Behind a Door
a novel by
Yelena Moskovich
DW Reviews "Pick of the Month"
"Moskovich mystifies with this vivid story of a pair of estranged siblings who immigrated to Milwaukee from the Soviet Union as children in 1991... The dynamic style and psychological depth make this an engaging mind bender.” —Publishers Weekly
From visionary author, Yelena Moskovich, A Door Behind A Door follows Olga as she puzzles her way in search of her missing brother, tangling with an underground Midwestern Russian mafia in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings. A Door Behind a Door
a novel by
Yelena Moskovich
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99"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 on VirtuosoIn Yelena Moskovich's spellbinding new novel, A Door Behind A Door, we meet Olga, who immigrates as part of the Soviet diaspora of ’91 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There she grows up and meets a girl and falls in love, beginning to believe that she can settle down. But a phone call from a bad man from her past brings to life a haunted childhood in an apartment building in the Soviet Union: an unexplained murder in her block, a supernatural stray dog, and the mystery of her beloved brother Moshe, who lost an eye and later vanished. We get pulled into Olga’s past as she puzzles her way through an underground Midwestern Russian mafia, in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings.
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QUICK VIEW Night Rooms
a collection of essays by
Gina Nutt
A Best Book of 2021
"[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."
2022 IPPY Medalist for Essay
—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
$ 8.99View full product details →$ 9.99Night 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. -
QUICK VIEW The Hare
a novel by
Melanie Finn
A Best Book of 2021
"Daring and unputdownable, The Hare is set to be one of the most talked-about books of 2021."
Vermont Book Award, Winner
—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
$ 9.99View full product details →$ 10.99"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.