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...
This wildly imaginative collection presents the misadventures of unlikely heroine Eleanor Stoddard as she tries to lead an exemplary life but finds th...
O, The Oprah Magazine "Title to Pick Up Now" & Oprah.com Book of the Week San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year Library Journal Best Stories Collection of the Year "Emotionally rich." --New York Times "Ambitious, lush and even thrilling." --Los Angeles Times "Ripping good yarns." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "The stories in this strange and original collection bend genres--horror, mystery, Western--into wondrous new shapes." --O, The Oprah Magazine In each of...
O, The Oprah Magazine "Title to Pick Up Now" & Oprah.com Book of the Week San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year
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,...
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 spi...
"O, The Oprah Magazine" Title to Pick Up Now American Library Association Over the Rainbow List selection Welcome to Palmerino, the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court. In imagining the real life of this brilliant, lesbian polymath known for her chilling supernatural stories, Melissa Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which the dead writer inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer. Positing the art of biography as an act of resurrection and possession, this...
"O, The Oprah Magazine" Title to Pick Up Now American Library Association Over the Rainbow List selection Welcome to Palmerino, the British e...
Firecracker Award Finalist Poets & Writers "Best Books for Writers" selection Literary Hub "Best Books about Books" selection Image: Art, Faith, Mystery "Top Ten of the Year" selection In an essay entitled "Spirit and Vision" Melissa Pritchard poses the question: "Why write?" Her answer reverberates throughout A Solemn Pleasure, presenting an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing constancy of the writing life. Whether describing the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction,...
Firecracker Award Finalist Poets & Writers "Best Books for Writers" selection Literary Hub "Best Books about Book...
