Stories deal with a pregnant psychic, the ghost of Sarah Bernhardt, a woman's obsession with tribal lore, an obese model, and a woman fearful of terminal illnesses

Spirit Seizures, Stories (Collier Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

Pritchard, Melissa

Short Stories & Anthologies

Collier Books/Macmillan

The ups and downs and turnarounds of a good girl who can’t help being bad no matter how hard she tries come hilariously to life in these disarming, utterly distinctive interrelated stories. Eleanor Stoddard tries to lead an exemplary life, to pursue the high road, and better herself and the world, but somehow things keep going awry. In “Port de Bras,” even as Eleanor spends her summer reading about the Holocaust, her good intentions are disrupted by the discovery that her first best friend is a compulsive liar who has cried wolf too many times. “Salve Regina” wryly captures another ill-fated step on Eleanor’s journey toward goodness. When, much to her mother’s dismay, she dreams of becoming a nun and dutifully says her rosary in the bathroom at her first cotillion, Eleanor finds that she still can’t save a friend from the consequences of her first seduction. Her marriage brings no relief from the twists of fate–and her quirky attempts to deal with them: In “The Case of the Disappearing Ingenue,” Eleanor turns to Nancy Drew for help when she suspects that her husband may be cheating on her. In the Pushcart Prize—winning “Funktionslust,” the final story in this collection, Eleanor does get her childhood wish. . . but not exactly in the way she imagined. Traveling through Central America with a rescued laboratory gorilla, “Like a rogue saint, Eleanor Stoddard was sighted here and there, most often by the innocent.” Disappearing Ingenue presents a heroine whose adventures with life and love are wildly imaginative.

Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard

Contemporary

DOUBLEDAY

The award-winning, widely praised author of Disappearing Ingenue is at the top of her form in this witty, wickedly funny novel about a romance writer whose real life begins to outpace the wildest flights of her imagination. After one failed marriage and numerous dating disasters, Prudence True Parker teaches Advanced Personal Journey at a community college in Arizona. Prudence’s own personal journey has led to a mountain of debts, and she is beginning to feel desperate. Salvation comes at the local library, where she meets Digby Deeds (alias Mildred Crawley), the author of the Savage Passion romance series. Nearing the end of his life, Digby is looking for someone to keep Savage Passion alive and offers Prudence the final forty plots of the wildly popular series. Moved more by financial desperation than literary aspiration, she reluctantly accepts the bequest. Just after taking on the project, Prudence’s friendly local psychic foresees the arrival of a romantic stranger in her life. The prediction comes true with startling speed: At a Native American charity event in Oklahoma, Prudence is swept off her feet by a mysterious young Comanche artist, Ray Chasing Hawk. A month later, Ray shows up on her doorstep. Fired by the irresistible desires their affair awakens, Prudence begins writing her first Native American romance. Real life gives her plenty of inspiration for her fictional plot and her home fills to overflowing with visitors, including Native American activists, medicine men, and wolves. In a hilarious, totally satisfying conclusion, the pieces of her life fall into place at the annual Romance Writers Convention in Houston, Texas.
Smartly written and laugh-out-loud funny, Late Bloomer is a high-spirited tale of romance, captivity, and savage love women of all ages will relish.
www.doubleday.com

Late Bloomer: A Novel

United States

This wildly imaginative collection presents the misadventures of unlikely heroine Eleanor Stoddard as she tries to lead an exemplary life but finds that things just keep going awry. In the summer after sixth grade, she dreams of being as courageous as Anne Frank. As a teenager, her sudden devotion to Catholicism coincides with her crush on a nun. As a suburban housewife who suspects her husband of having an affair, she imitates Nancy Drew to try to solve her own personal mystery. And as a middle-aged woman, she embarks on a trek through Central America accompanied by a rescued laboratory gorilla. While Eleanor makes her way through a whirlwind of adventures with life and love in which she is constantly reinventing her identity and rethinking her priorities, she manages to become a first-rate student, a published poet, and a loyal mother. Each story offers a glimpse into her familiar and charmingly odd journey, and she comes hilariously to life in these disarming tales.

Disappearing Ingenue

Anchor

Prudence True Parker teaches a course called Advanced Personal Journey at a community college in Arizona, but her own personal journey is not really advancing. She’s divorced, debt-ridden, and starting to feel desperate, when she meets Digby Deeds (alias Mildred Crowley), the author of the wildly successful Savage Passion romance series, at her local library. When the dying Deeds offers Prudence the final forty plots of his popular series, her financial needs trump her literary aspirations, and she accepts. To her astonishment, her own life soon begins to outpace Passion’s fevered tales, and she finds herself in the midst of a plot involving psychics, a sexy young Comanche lover, Native American activists, medicine men, and even a few wolves. Quick-witted and laugh-out-loud funny, Late Bloomerfollows Prue on her madcap journey, as she finds her real life surpassing the wildest flights of her imagination.

Late Bloomer

Dramas & Plays

In these stories by Melissa Pritchard, the past brushes up against the present, the voices of both the sane and the obsessed are heard, and the spirits speaking unbidden through the mouths of some spurn others who desire them most.Some of the men and women in Spirit Seizures dwell contentedly on the surface of life, even making a science or an art of what they see around them. But many of the characters in these stories see―sometimes calmly, sometimes with agitation―beneath life's surface, beyond sun's light. The title story tells of a psychic women, pregnant with her second child, who welcomes over her farmer husband's objections the visits of an older couple desiring a séance with the spirit of their dead daughter. Spirits are also summoned in "Rocking on Water, Floating in Glass," when a woman consults the shade of Sarah Bernhardt to help her decide whether to leave her refuge in a dark antique shop and reenter the world of the living.The husband in "Ramon; Souvenirs" recalls his wife's obsession with pueblo culture and her ambitious courtship of the impotent Indian elder who she hopes will initiate her into native spiritual mysteries. But the greatest desire of La Bête, a spectacularly obese model painted by the French impressionists, is to herself become a perfect object, viewed and adored for her form, not her crude essence. Mrs. Grant in "With Wings Cross Water" is painfully isolated from the surface of her family's life by her fears of terminal illness, of what lies beneath her skin. And Mrs. Gump, the reverend's housekeeper, prays and cleans the house furiously, hoping to obliterate all traces of the worldly beauty that distracts her employer and her artist son from the hereafter.Written with humor but often poignant when they reveal the veins of longing that run through men and women, the stories in Spirit Seizures follow the elusive currents that link us to the eternal, the fluid boundaries that wash between love and mourning.

Spirit Seizures: Stories by Melissa Pritchard (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

University of Georgia Press

In these stories by Melissa Pritchard, the past brushes up against the present, the voices of both the sane and the obsessed are heard, and the spirits speaking unbidden through the mouths of some spurn others who desire them most. Some of the men and women in Spirit Seizures dwell contentedly on the surface of life, even making a science or an art of what they see around them. But many of the characters in these stories see--sometimes calmly, sometimes with agitation--beneath life's surface, beyond sun's light. The title story tells of a psychic women, pregnant with her second child, who welcomes over her farmer husband's objections the visits of an older couple desiring a séance with the spirit of their dead daughter. Spirits are also summoned in "Rocking on Water, Floating in Glass," when a woman consults the shade of Sarah Bernhardt to help her decide whether to leave her refuge in a dark antique shop and reenter the world of the living. The husband in "Ramon; Souvenirs" recalls his wife's obsession with pueblo culture and her ambitious courtship of the impotent Indian elder who she hopes will initiate her into native spiritual mysteries. But the greatest desire of La Bête, a spectacularly obese model painted by the French impressionists, is to herself become a perfect object, viewed and adored for her form, not her crude essence. Mrs. Grant in "With Wings Cross Water" is painfully isolated from the surface of her family's life by her fears of terminal illness, of what lies beneath her skin. And Mrs. Gump, the reverend's housekeeper, prays and cleans the house furiously, hoping to obliterate all traces of the worldly beauty that distracts her employer and her artist son from the hereafter. Written with humor but often poignant when they reveal the veins of longing that run through men and women, the stories in Spirit Seizures follow the elusive currents that link us to the eternal, the fluid boundaries that wash between love and mourning.

Spirit Seizures: Stories

Selene of the Spirits

Set in the romantic world of Victorian London, Selene of the Spirits is the story of a beautiful young woman with psychic powers who acquires sudden fame as a medium in the spiritualist circles of the day. Just as precipitous is Selene fall from grace after the revelation of her love affair with a renowned scientist. Exiled to the Welsh countryside, Selene learns more about the spiritual, and carnal, side of life than she ever had in London, as she is transformed by the fulfillment of her love.

Ontario Review Pr

Set in Victorian London, this story follows a beautiful woman with psychic powers who becomes famous as a medium, but soon falls from grace when she has an affair with a renowned scientist and is exiled to the Welsh countryside where her life is transformed

Book by Brashler, Anne, Pritchard, Melissa

The American Story: The Best of Storyquarterly

Brashler, Anne

Cane Hill Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pritchard, Melissa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pritchard, Melissa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pritchard, Melissa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Spirit Seizures, Stories (Collier Fiction)

Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard

Late Bloomer: A Novel

Disappearing Ingenue

Late Bloomer

Spirit Seizures: Stories by Melissa Pritchard (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

Spirit Seizures: Stories

Selene of the Spirits

Selene of the Spirits

The American Story: The Best of Storyquarterly