two dollar radio BOOKS TOO LOUD TO IGNORE. “As much a literary movement as a publishing company.” —Publishers Weekly
2020 Catalog
“As much known for their ability to curate boundary-pushing writers as they are for their DIY aesthetic.” Bustle “Publisher of some of the best gritty Americana novels of the past decade.” The Atlantic “They are delivering so much genuinely exciting fiction that they make it look easy.” Los Angeles Times
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.
WHITEOUT CONDITIONS novel by Tariq Shah
Literary Fiction | Urban |Noir Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-91-0 US $14.99, MARCH 2020 5.5” x 7.5”, 142 pages
“Memorable.” —Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed “The grip of this thing squeezes well past its 110 pages. A little of this, a little of that, but reductive comparisons are no use here because Shah has taken the best qualities of existing tropes and made them his own. A wild, dangerous game of dodge ball played in the farthest corner of fiction’s playground.” —Wesley Minter, Third Place Books “Shah reminds you that even though he’s written a novel, he’s still a poet... Whiteout Conditions explores how nostalgia and toxic masculinity operate (and fail) as a conduit for grief.” —Chicago Reader “Dark and visual, Whiteout Conditions is a slow motion skid on black ice of a book. You might not want to keep reading, but it will be very hard to stop. Just steer into the skid. Well done, Tariq Shah.” —Mary O’Malley, Anderson’s Bookshop “Whiteout Conditions explores toxic masculinity, revenge, tragedy and other forces that obscure a life’s path.” —Chicago Tribune “Shah’s sharp and surprising prose is the perfect vehicle for this bleakly comic novel, in which sparks of transcendence intermittently light up the dark.” —David Gates, author of Jernigan and A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio Rights sold: UK/Commonwealth (Dead Ink Books)
Synopsis On the heels of the holidays, as severe weather batters Chicago, Ant returns after 5 years away. He’s going with childhood friend, Vince, to Vince’s teenage cousin Ray’s funeral. With the passing of Ant’s mother and grandparents, and estrangement from his father, he’s tried to wipe the slate clean, and in so doing has adapted a quirky attraction to the grandiosity and traditions of funerals. Ray’s death is different. Ray was a decade younger than Ant and Vince, who they always got stuck looking after, and for that reason they share many formative memories: getting bomb pops the muggy summer the power was off, sneaking Ray his first taste of booze, or the time Ray found his father’s handgun while they were watching wrestling on TV. In this exploration of male friendship, toxic masculinity, grief, violence, prescription drug abuse, and working-class life in the suburban Midwest, Tariq Shah emerges as an impressive new voice willing to mine the darkness of character’s psyches.
TARIQ SHAH, born and raised in Illinois, writes fiction and poetry, and has work appearing or forthcoming in Jubilat, Heavy Feather Review, No, Dear Magazine, ANMLY (fka Drunken Boat), Gravel, BlazeVox, and other publications. From 2007-2009, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, and he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, where he now teaches. His chapbook, heart assist device, was a finalist for the 2019 no, dear/small anchor press chapbook series. Whiteout Conditions is his first novel.
TWO DOLLAR RADIO GUIDE TO VEGAN COOKING Cookbook | Humor | Essays | Vegan Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-95-8 US $14.99, SEPTEMBER 2020 5.5” x 5.5”, 126 pages
If you’ve searched online for a recipe, you’ve likely encountered a digressive treatise on family history or mundane childhood reflection, none of which actually has anything to do with how to make enchilada sauce. After extensive scrolling, you’ve really only uncovered that self-taught chef/blogger Linda needs to talk to a professional counselor about her relationship with her mother. In this Two Dollar Radio Guide to Vegan Cooking, executive vegan chefs Jean Claude van Randy and Speed Dog unearth a fount of vegan cheffing knowledge. In addition to exquisite recipes and vegan life hacks, they, too, view food as a story: nary a meal is prepared without recalling when Speed Dog summited Goat Peak in Banff armed with nothing more than a sack full of cherry ring pops and a wily pack burro. This Guide to Vegan Cooking is for you if: • You’re looking for satisfying vegan food; • Interested in a vegan diet but unwilling to give up cheese; • Accessible vegan recipes that don’t require hard-to-find ingredients you have to google and can’t pronounce; • The adventurous tales behind the meals. We are all explorers, vegan food explorers — join us on this culinary journey as we slay Vegan Hunger Demons.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
TWO DOLLAR RADIO GUIDE TO NAMING YOUR BABY Humor | Parody | Adult Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-96-5 US $14.99, NOVEMBER 2020 5.5” x 5.5”, 126 pages
Your friends are in the hospital, awaiting the arrival of their first child. Then, you see the Instagram post: “Hey everyone, mom and son are doing fine. Happy and healthy! We want to introduce you to… KEITH.” What do you say? I mean, you’re meant to say congratulations, but do they know? Keith is clearly step-dad’s name, and there have been no recorded Baby Keiths on record since the last time gas was 5 dollars a gallon. Is it ironic? Maybe it’s ironic. Like DadCore, but … a baby. With Two Dollar Radio’s Guide to Naming Your Baby, you’ll find plenty of useful information—charts, graphs, potential career paths, projected family trees—to help you avoid blame when your full-grown Karen asks you why everyone asks her if she wants to see a manager. Your Karen is into horses, we know, but that’s why you should have gone with Millie. Also inside: • Fiona: Ahh, yes, you like Disney. Who doesn’t? But there are no actual princesses, while many women grow up to become penpals with murderers and marry them in prison. You’re playing with fire. • Dylan: Can you still love your child if they grow up to send dick pics through LinkedIn? • Hailey: It’s hard to hear anyone say “I’m not racist, but…” especially when it’s a 14-year-old. Who wronged her? It was you. In this ever-changing world, it’s hard to know how life is going to turn out for your new- or soon-to-be-born. You can’t keep them from getting their heart broken. And you won’t be able to shield every force of evil from them over the course of their whole life. You will, however, be able to avoid naming them Harley. You will need our help.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
THE BOOK OF X novel by Sarah Rose Etter
Literary Fiction | Sci-Fi |Surreal Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-81-1 US $17.99, JULY 2019 5.5” x 7.5”, 300 pages
A Best Book of 2019. —Vulture, The Thrillist, Buzzfeed The Believer Book Awards Shortlist. “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 “The Book of X has a fresh vision that makes it a strange book in strange times.” —Michael Silverblatt, KCRW’s ‘Bookworm’ “I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.” —Carmen Maria Machado
Synopsis 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. Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: Audio
A captivating new work of feminist sci-fi in the vein of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado, The Book of X meaningfully addresses contemporary issues of gender and belonging with a haunting, readable tale filled with surreal flourishes.
Excerpt I WAS BORN A KNOT LIKE MY MOTHER and her mother before her. Picture three women with their torsos twisted like thick pieces of rope with a single hitch in the center. The doctors had the same reaction each birth: They lifted our slick warped bodies into the air and stared, horrified. All three of us wailed, strange new animals, our lineage gnarled, aching, hardened. Outside, beyond the bright white lights of the hospital, the machine of the world kept grinding on, a metal mouth baring its teeth, a maw waiting to clench down on us.
SARAH ROSE ETTER is the author of Tongue Party. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, VICE, Guernica, Philadelphia Weekly, and more. She is the recipient of writing residencies at the Disquiet International Program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Creative Program in Iceland. She earned her MFA from Rosemont College. She lives in San Francisco.
SOME OF US ARE VERY HUNGRY NOW essays by Andre Perry Essay Collection Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-83-5 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2019 5.5” x 7.5”, 184 pages
A Best Book of 2019. —PopMatters “These essays shine with broken humanity and announce the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as a storyteller.” —Gabino Iglesias, NPR “Beautiful, brilliant, bold...Tantamount to a slice from the Americana songbook. These essays are ballads, images from the self, isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land.” —Christopher John Stephens, PopMatters “[Andre Perry’s] essays are most satisfying for their largely meandering nature, the abstention from a resolution. Most pieces end on quiet, melancholic notes, without a way out.” —Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle “An interrogation of language, pop culture, society, and the self, Andre Perry’s essay collection Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now dissects uncomfortable truths and universalities... With his frank, empathetic tone and no-nonsense prose, Andre Perry is a fresh American voice that demands to be heard.” —Foreword Reviews “Perry’s debut collection of essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, charts a course into his past, offering a vision complete with imagined talk-show interviews, fragments of scripts and even multiple-choice questions.” —Los Angeles Times
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
Synopsis With luminous insight and fervent prose, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America. The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of childhood schoolyards and Midwestern dive-bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable American voice.
ANDRE PERRY lived in post-dot-com crash San Francisco in the early 2000s. He worked first in tech and advertising before becoming a middle-school teacher. At night, he navigated the local independent music scene, playing in several bands and producing events for artists across mediums. After moving to Iowa City in 2005, he co-founded the Midwest edition of the week-long music and literature gathering, Mission Creek Festival. This is his first book.
THEY CAN’T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US essays by Hanif Abdurraqib Literary Collection | Essays Trade Paper Original, Gatefold 978-1-937512-65-1 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 222 pages
“A much-needed collection for our time. [Abdurraqib] has proven to be one of the most essential voices of his generation.” —NPR “Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him.” —Greil Marcus, Village Voice A GROUND-BREAKING INSTANT CLASSIC THAT PROVES ABDURRAQIB A BELLWETHER FOR OUR TIMES. Synopsis 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. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill is gripping, immediate, and soul-stirring. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio Rights sold: UK/Commonwealth, Audio
HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism has been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New York Times, and MTV News, where is a columnist. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was published in 2016 by Button Poetry.
BEST BOOK OF 2017/2018. —Rolling Stone, NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books “I loved [They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us], like beyond all measure. It’s spectacular.” —Samantha Irby, The New York Times
“The Ohio poet/critic digs deep into what it means to be American in our moment — and how much music has to do with it.” —Rolling Stone “With a voice that rings clear off the page, Abdurraqib is an accomplished wordsmith, whose reflections on pop culture are intensely personal, political and utterly compelling.” —CBC “Poignant and important. Abdurraqib offers a perspective that connects music, art, and memory, with the political realities of our time.” —Esquire “A collection of death-defying protest songs for the Black Lives Matter era.” —Chicago Tribune “Abdurraqib unites familiar sounds with fresh observations about music and the state of contemporary America... essential, gripping reading.” —Pitchfork
FOUND AUDIO novel by N.J. Campbell Literary Fiction | Mystery | Noir | Thriller | Adventure Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-57-6 US $14.99, JULY 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 162 pages
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A page-turner, an onion peel of a story surrounding nothing less than the central questions of human existence. The reader is led down a rabbit hole and back out again, confused, afraid, but nevertheless also ever so slightly amused. This is a weird little book full of momentum, intrigue, and weighty ideas to mull over. —Publishers Weekly
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A wicked metafictional mystery [and] dizzying epistolary novel about dreams, perception, and the human psyche. —Kirkus Reviews The novel is genius... simple, spare, and amazingly effective. —Foreword Reviews Amid the static of contemporary literature can be heard blips of fictionfuture in N.J. Campbell’s defiantly bold Found Audio. —Steve Erickson N.J. Campbell’s Found Audio is a wild, wonderful creature: part Borges, part VanderMeer, part forgotten ‘70s psychedelic action movie. Convincing, complex, and emotionally resonant—this is a book not to be missed. —Christian Kiefer
For the first time ever, Found Audio presents a complete transcription of the unsettling audio recordings of a mysterious unnamed adventure journalist and his decades-long pursuit of the Borgesian “City of Dreams,” alongside analysis from audio expert, Amrapali Anna Singh.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
Synopsis Amrapali Anna Singh is an historian and analyst capable of discerning the most cryptic and trivial details from audio recordings. One day, a mysterious man appears at her office in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, having traveled a great distance to bring her three Type IV audio cassettes that bear the stamp of a library in Buenos Aires that may or may not exist. On the cassettes is the deposition of an adventure journalist and his obsessive pursuit of an amorphous, legendary, and puzzling “City of Dreams.� Spanning decades, his quest leads him from a snake-hunter in the Louisiana bayou to the walled city of Kowloon on the eve of its destruction, from the Singing Dunes of Mongolia to a chess tournament in Istanbul. The deposition also begs the question: Who is making the recording, and why? Despite being explicitly instructed not to, curiosity gets the better of Singh and she mails a transcription of the cassettes with her analysis to an acquaintance before vanishing. The man who bore the cassettes, too, has disappeared. The journalist was unnamed.
N.J. CAMPBELL was born in the Midwest. He has won the Little Tokyo Short Story Contest, received accolades from the California State Legislature, and has been anthologized in the collection American Fiction from New Rivers Press. Found Audio is his first novel.
An excerpt from Found Audio
O
f course, I always listened for strange things in my journalist friends’ stories, but nothing ever grabbed my interest. In general, nothing about the experience stayed with me, except my interest in slightly stranger stories. I was the guy that would go spend six weeks in silence in the company of Carthusian monks to write about their absolutely quiet lives. Lives they lived behind thick abbey walls and lifetime vows of silence. Or the guy that would spend a week alone in a supposedly haunted Irish castle. Or the guy that would opt for taking a vision quest in New Guinea. Before, it had been more about the people in a different way. Now, it was more about their experience, and not just their experience from the outside, but their experience from the inside. I tried as best as I could to write about what I had lived, rather than what I saw was being lived. And it’s a fussy distinction, maybe a useless one, but it was slightly different from the way I had approached my job before. And then, I was at a market in Turkmenistan meeting up with Julien. It was outside of Ashgabat and there were dozens of vendors. There were rugs—so many rugs—of all shapes and sizes in rich, dark colors laid over sofas and chairs and tents. And between these almost endless displays of dyed and colored wool lay empty square lots of rusted car parts, herbal tea merchants, grocers, livestock and kebabs of yogurt and meat. It was a bright, hot day and there were droves of people out. We met for coffee at a makeshift café that had refrigerator boxes draped in bright linens for tables and wood crates spray painted black for seating. He was on his way to visit the Darvaza gas crater, also known as the ‘Door To The Abyss,’ and I had just finished spending a month traveling with a nomadic herding community learning about their millennia old, ritualistic style of horsemanship for a breeding magazine. This kind of curiosity assignment was less and less Julien’s thing. He was focusing more on human interest pieces, but he knew I had been growing a reputation for the exact type of thing he was getting out of. The type of thing he had tipped me off about with the swamp. And while I listened to him fret about his assignment, he offhandedly mentioned something interesting. He said, ‘It’s like chasing the City of Dreams—the reader always expects more intrigue than is actually there.’ I asked him what he meant. ‘It’s a mirage. The burning pit in the middle of nowhere that’s been burning for over twenty years is just that—a burning pit fueled by natural gas deposits,
confirmed by a new series of geological surveys that state the fossil fuel rich soil will continue to burn for many more decades into the future—not that it is, or is anything remotely close to being, in fact, the Gates of Hell,’ he went on. ‘No,’ I said, ‘what do you mean by chasing the City of Dreams?’ ‘C’mon, you’ve been doing this type of thing now longer than I have. This is exactly up your alley. You really haven’t heard of this?’ he said, expecting me to laugh, but instead I just stared at him, waiting for him to go on. ‘The City of Dreams,’ he said, ‘is an old myth in journalism. You really haven’t heard of this?’ he asked, emphasizing the ‘you’ with a capital ‘Y’ in his voice. Whatever he was talking about, for whatever reason, struck me in a very odd way. My interest was inherent, instinctive, like a dog with a bone that keeps gnawing and gnawing until the bone is nothing but splinters in its mouth. At the time, I racked my brains for anything I could remember having read in newspapers or books or magazines—or overheard in passing conversations, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing. My memory was empty, blank. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I really haven’t—now tell me more.’ ‘The City Of Dreams,’ he said, ‘is a myth in journalism that connects loose statements about dreams in relationship to a place from various historical sources. Dr. Livingstone’s journal contains a passage about a ‘Plateau of Dreams’ in relationship to cannibals he heard about in the mountains of Burundi. Napoleon’s field notes mention a ‘Caravan of Dreams’ in the heavy rain outside of Genappe before the battle of Waterloo. Cortés is fabled to have told a story to the King of Spain about a merchant in Tlaxcala who had been to the ‘Festival of Dreams.’ The list goes on. Even the Egyptians have hieroglyphs that can be translated as the ‘City of Sleeping Worlds.’ The point is, it’s a myth—a mirage in the margins of conjecture and hearsay. People want it to be real, want it to be true, so they imagine they hear things about it or connect events or source materials to one another in selective or specific ways. Dr. Livingstone was in a malaria fever for most of his time in Africa. Napoleon could have been writing about his dreams the night before Waterloo. Cortés could have been embellishing a bedtime story for the Emperor of the New World—the hieroglyphs could just as easily be interpreted as talking about death, as the Egyptians were most of the time anyway. You get the point—it’s not real, it’s a dream.’ ‘Of course,’ I said, finished my coffee and paid for the both of us while I told him I had found it an interesting story. Then, before I left, I thought to ask him if he had spoken to Bianca. He said that he had, and I asked how she was doing. He seemed nervous and said that she was doing well. I understood, or thought I did, and said that if I should come up, to let her know that I said hello. He knew how hard the break-up was on both of us, and I assumed he didn’t want to bring
up anything painful. I would have asked him to say more—I would have asked him to say that I missed her warm, soft smell in the bed beside me, her turquoise and ruby jewelry on the windowsill or the way she’d run two fingers down the side of my neck every time we’d meet—but you can’t ask that kind of thing. You can’t really say any of that to a mutual friend. It’s not fair, not to anyone. So, I told him it was good to see him and left the café. The rest of the day before my flight, I thought about the swamp again. And, again, I forgot about it, the City of Dreams and everything that wasn’t my current assignment, until I was called to the Walled City of Kowloon before its destruction in ’93. ■
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
PALACES novel by Simon Jacobs Literary Fiction | Mystery | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-55-2 US $15.99, JANUARY 2018 5.5” x 7.5”, 242 pages
John and Joey are a young couple immersed in their local midwestern punk scene, who after graduating college sever all ties and move to a perverse and nameless northeastern coastal city. They drift in and out of art museums, basement shows, and derelict squats seemingly unfazed as the city slowly slides into chaos around them. Late one night, forced out of their living space, John and Joey are driven to take shelter in a chain pharmacy before emerging to a city in full-scale riot. They find themselves the only passengers on a commuter train headed north, and exit at the final stop to discover the area entirely devoid of people. As John and Joey negotiate their future through bizarre, troubling manifestations of the landscape and a succession of abandoned mansions housing only scant clues to their owners’ strange and sudden disappearance, they’re also forced to confront the resurgent violence and buried memories of their shared past. With incisive precision and a cool detachment, Simon Jacobs has
crafted a surreal and spellbinding first novel of horror and intrigue.
SIMON JACOBS is the author of Saturn, a collection of David Bowie stories, and of Masterworks, a short story collection. His other fiction has appeared in Tin House, Black Warrior Review, Joyland, and Paper Darts. He lives in New York City. Palaces is his first novel.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
SEEING PEOPLE OFF novel by Jana Beňová
translated by Janet Livingstone Literary Fiction | Translation Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-59-0 US $14.99, MAY 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 126 pages
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A fascinating novel. Fans of inwardlooking postmodernists like Clarice Lispector will find much to admire here. —NPR Winner of the EU Prize for Literature, Seeing People Off is the English-language debut of a dazzling contemporary female voice. Synopsis 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 postsocialist realities, and Elza’s attraction to actor Kalisto Tanzi, Seeing People Off is a kaleidoscopic, poetic, and deeply funny portrait of a relationship. JANA BEŇOVÁ is one of the most acclaimed Slovak writers, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature. She is the author of the novels Seeing People Off, Get Off! Get Off!, Parker, and Honeymoon (forthcoming from Two Dollar Radio), as well as three collections of poems.
Rights held: World English, Film/TV, Audio
THE VINE THAT ATE THE SOUTH novel by J.D. Wilkes Literary Fiction | Adventure | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-55-2 US $15.99, MARCH 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 208 pages, 13 B&W Illustrations
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A relentlessly fun novel, the literary equivalent of a country-punk album that grabs you and refuses to let go. Undeniably one of the smartest, most original Southern Gothic novels to come along in years. —NPR
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A sly, rollicking Southern phantasmagoria that finds the sweet spot between tall tale and something more dangerous and psychological. Hilarious, profane, entertaining, and sneakily written. The illustrations are brilliant, too. —Jeff VanderMeer
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Kentuckians Hunter S. Thompson and Johnny Depp would be cackling to beat the devil over this brazen tribute to folklore, tradition, and hillbilly rituals. —Kirkus Reviews The Debut Novel by the Frontman of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers
J.D. WILKES is a visual artist, musician, author, filmmaker, and Kentucky Colonel, perhaps best known as the charismatic frontman for Th’Legendary Shack Shakers, a band that has been described as a “dynamite group” by Stephen King, and whose music has been featured on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack for HBO’s TrueBlood.
Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: Audio
Synopsis
With the energy, wit, and singularity of vision that have earned him a reputation as a celebrated and charismatic musician, The Vine That Ate the South announces J.D. Wilkes as an accomplished storyteller on a surreal, Homeric voyage that strikes at the very heart of American mythology. In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as “The Deadening,” where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice—the one and only, Carver Canute—set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine. Their quest leads them face to face with albino panthers, Great Dane-riding girls, protective property owners, and just about every American folk-demon ever, while forcing the protagonist to finally take stock of his relationship with his father and the man’s mysterious disappearance. The Vine That Ate the South is a mesmerizing fantasia where Wilkes ambitiously grapples with the contradictions of the contemporary American South while subversively considering how well we know our own family and friends.
Rudolph Wurlitzer
THE DROP EDGE OF YONDER novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer Literary Fiction | Adventure | Western Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-61-3 US $15.99, MARCH 2017 5.5” x 7.5”, 252 pages
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One of the most interesting voices in American fiction. —Rolling Stone The most hallucinogenic Western you’ll ever catch in the movie house of your mind’s eye. What results is a genre farce with oracular power—a Queen of Hearts sutra, a court jester’s Blood Meridian. With Drop Edge, Wurlitzer has considerably raised the stakes. —Bookforum A picaresque American Book of the Dead... in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Southern. —Los Angeles Times Published to international acclaim, Wurlitzer’s first novel in a quarter-century became an instant counter-cultural classic and returns to print a handsome new edition.
RUDOLPH WURLITZER is the author of Nog, Flats, Quake, and Slow Fade, and a non-fiction book, Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He has written numerous screenplays, including Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Two Lane Blacktop, and Walker. Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: French (Christian Bourgois Editeur), German (Residenz Verlag), Spanish (Tropo Editions), Audio
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[A] psychedelic adventure... Ruminative and rip-roaring at once. —Entertainment Weekly An epic Western that merges the unique narrative invention of [Wurlitzer’s] early novels with the cinematic drift of his best scripts. —Dazed & Confused
Synopsis The Drop Edge of Yonder is an adventurous book that explores the truth and temptations of the American myth. Beginning in the savage wilds of Colorado in the waning days of the fur trade, the story follows Zebulon Shook, a mountain man who has had a curse placed on him by a mysterious Native American woman whose lover he murdered. The book follows Zebulon as he encounters people obsessed with greed and the politics of expansion. The trail takes him from Colorado to the remote reaches of the Northwest, a journey that traverses the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields. Far from being simply a “western,” The Drop Edge of Yonder focuses on a time that could be considered the starting point of American capitalism and expansionism, and has led Judith Thurman to refer to the book as “a subversive modern novel about the bounds of love and the discontents of civilized life.” The Drop Edge of Yonder originated as a screenplay treatment that intrigued Hollywood folk such as Sam Peckinpah, Hal Ashby, Yves Simeneau, Jim Jarmusch, Roger Spotiswoode, Alex Cox, and Richard Gere, before being adapted and expanded into this original novel by Wurlitzer. Rights held: World, Film/TV Rights sold: French (Christian Bourgois Editeur), German (Residenz Verlag), Spanish (Tropo Editions), Audio
THE GLOAMING novel by Melanie Finn Literary Fiction | Mystery | Thriller Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-47-7 US $16.99, SEPTEMBER 2016 5.5” x 7.5”, 318 pages
“Deeply satisfying. Finn is a remarkably confident and supple storyteller. [The Gloaming] deserves major attention.” —New York Times Book Review New York Times Notable Book of 2016 Pilgrim Jones’ husband has just left her for another woman, stranding her in a small Swiss town where she is one day involved in a tragic car accident that leaves 3 school-children dead. Cleared of responsibility though overcome with guilt, she alights for Africa, where she befriends a series of locals each with their own tragic past, each isolated in their own private way in the remote Tanzanian outpost. Mysteriously, the remains of an albino African appear packaged in a box, spooking everyone—sign of a curse placed by a witch doctor—though its intended recipient is uncertain. Pilgrim volunteers to rid the town of the box and its contents, though wherever she goes, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being followed.
MELANIE FINN was born and raised in Kenya until age 11, when she moved with her family to Connecticut. In 2004, her first novel, Away From You was published to international acclaim. She and her husband, the wildlife filmmaker Matt Aeberhard, moved to a remote region of Tanzania to make DisneyNature’s beautiful, haunting flamingo epic, The Crimson Wing. Rights held: North American Rights sold: Audio
THE ORANGE EATS CREEPS novel by Grace Krilanovich Literary Fiction | Horror Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9820151-8-6 US $16, SEPT 2010 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages
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The book feels written in a fever; it is breathless, scary, and like nothing I’ve ever read before. Krilanovich’s work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins. —NPR
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A steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism—the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe. —The Believer National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ Award NPR Best Books of 2010 The Believer Book Award Finalist
Synopsis The most brazen and memorable contemporary American debut, following 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. Rights held: World Rights sold: Film/TV (Mary Harron, Greencard Productions), Audio
CRAPALACHIA memoir by Scott McClanahan Literary Fiction | Memoir | Biography Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-03-3 US $16, APRIL 2013 5.5” x 7.5”, 172 pages
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[McClanahan] aims to lasso the moon. The man has purpose. This is his symphony, every note designed to resonate, to linger. —New York Times Book Review
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Crapalachia is the genuine article: intelligent, atmospheric, raucously funny and utterly wrenching. —Washington Post [Crapalachia is] a wild and inventive book, unquestionably fresh of spirit, and totally unafraid to break formalisms to tell it like it was. —VICE An endearing and haunting coming-of-age story Scott McClanahan as a resounding talent.
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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. Rights held: World Rights sold: Audio, French (Editions Cambourakis)
HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS novel by Karolina Waclawiak
Literary Fiction | Comedy Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9832471-8-0 US $16, JULY 2012 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages
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Reinvents the immigration story. —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Anya is a young woman living in a Russian neighborhood in L.A., torn between her parents’ Polish heritage and trying to assimilate in the U.S. She decides instead to try to assimilate in her Russian neighborhood, embodied by the nightclub, the Twin Palms. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio THE ABSOLUTION OF ROBERTO ACESTES LAING novel by Nicholas Rombes
Literary Fiction | Noir | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-23-1 US $15.99, NOVEMBER 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 162 pages
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Kafka directed by David Lynch doesn’t even come close. —3:AM Magazine In the mid-’90s a rare-film librarian at a state university in Pennsylvania mysteriously burned his entire stockpile of film canisters and disappeared. Years later, a journalist tracks the librarian down, to find out what movies were burned, and why.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
CRYSTAL EATERS novel by Shane Jones
Literary Fiction | Sci-Fi | Family Drama Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-18-7 US $16, JUNE 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 168 pages
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Jones demonstrates a tightrope-like eye for finagling between Pynchonesque quasi-science-fictional feelings and the book’s physics, allowing almost anything to happen at any time, wrapped in a Wallace-like grip of childlike awe. —VICE
Remy is a young girl living in a town that believes in crystal count. When her mother becomes sick, she sets out to accomplish what no one else has, and increase her mother’s crystal count. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio THE CORRESPONDENCE ARTIST novel by Barbara Browning Literary Fiction | Comedy Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9820151-9-3 US $15.99, MARCH 2011 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages
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Both witty and devastating. —Nylon
An unremarkable woman has been carrying on with an internationally recognized artist, largely via e-mail. To protect her paramour’s identity, she creates a series of correspondent, alternative lovers in a selfdestructing roman à clef.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
ANCIENT OCEANS OF CENTRAL KENTUCKY novel by David Connerley Nahm
Literary Fiction | Thriller | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-20-0 US $16, AUGUST 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 192 pages
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Deeply suspenseful... it’s impossible to stop reading until you’ve gone through each beautiful line. —NPR Leah’s little brother, Jacob, disappeared when the pair were younger, a tragedy that haunts her still. When a grown man arrives at the non-profit Leah directs claiming to be Jacob, she is wrenched back to her childhood. A mysterious, lyric exploration of childhood, loss, and ghost stories.
Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio NOT DARK YET novel by Berit Ellingsen
Literary Fiction | Sci-Fi Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-16-3 US $16, MARCH 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 218 pages
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Fascinating, surreal, gorgeously written, and like nothing you’ve ever read before, Not Dark Yet is the book we all need to read right now. It is art about science, climate change, and activism, and it vitally explores how we as people deal with a world that is transforming in terrifying ways. —BuzzFeed A rich character-driven drama, addressing questions of personal morals and societal ethics, set on the cusp of a self-inflicted apocalypse. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
I SMILE BACK novel by Amy Koppelman
Literary Fiction | Family Drama Trade Paper Original, 978-0-9763895-9-0 US $15, DECEMBER 2008 5.5” x 7.5”, 194 pages
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Powerful. Koppelman’s instincts help her navigate these choppy waters with inventiveness and integrity. —Los Angeles Times
Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Silverman, I Smile Back “explores with ruthless honesty a woman come undone.” Rights held: World Rights sold: Italian (Safara Editore), Audio THE GLACIER novel by Jeff Wood
Literary Fiction Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-41-5 US $15.95, SEPTEMBER 2016 5.5” x 7.5”, 220 pages
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Gorgeously and urgently written. —Library Journal, starred
A brilliant and visceral cinematic novel about authenticity and the American condition, following a cater-waiter, a surveying crew, and a poet living in a storage unit. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
MADE TO BREAK novel by D. Foy
Literary Fiction | Thriller Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-16-3 US $16, MARCH 2014 5.5” x 7.5”, 218 pages
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Literary, cinematic. —The Daily Beast
Two days before New Years, a pack of five friends head to a remote cabin near Lake Tahoe to celebrate the holidays. After a car accident leaves one friend sick and dying, and severe weather traps them at the cabin, there is nowhere to go, forcing them to finally and ultimately take stock and confront their past transgressions. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio NOTHING novel by Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon
Literary Fiction | Mystery Trade Paper Original, 978-1-937512-11-8 US $16, NOVEMBER 2013 5.5” x 7.5”, 187 pages
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Apocalyptic and psychologically attentive. —New York Times Book Review Epic wildfires are snaking through the Missoula valley as James hitchhikes into town in search of clues to his father’s mysterious death two decades earlier. What he finds instead are Ruth and Bridget, two Frenemies on a dangerous path. Rights held: World, Film/TV, Audio
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