The Next (A Novel)

One of Library Journal's "Best Books of 2016"
A Best 35 Over 35 Pick
Blogcritics Best Fiction of the Year

"A novel so startlingly original and so unafraid to approach complicated, bald emotion and anger." —The Brooklyn Rail

"A very cunning variation on the revenge fable." —The New York Times Book Review

"The lusty, livid Joanna is the hottest middle-aged/dead woman in fiction." —The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Joanna DeAngelis may be gone from this life, but she has a score to settle before she can move on to the next.

Abandoned by Ned McGowan, her younger lover, and obsessed with his betrayal, Joanna falls into a dark afterlife, only to rise up as a restless, vengeful spirit. Anna and Elena, her loving daughters, grapple with grief. Her faithful dog, Tom, watches and waits. But Joanna has only one thing on her agenda: revenge. She streaks through contemporary Manhattan, chasing Ned down, determined to hold him accountable for leaving her alone in her darkest hour.

Along the way, Joanna revisits the beautiful life she once had, the choices she made and the consequences she suffered. She is transported by memory into desire and even deeper, into her very soul, where she searches for what’s been lost … and finds what is eternal. At the end of her journey, none of them – Jo’s daughters, her dog, Ned and the ghost Joanna – will ever be the same.

Fierce and funny, dark and uplifting, a sexy, lyrical page-turner, Stephanie Gangi's The Next is at its heart, a love story about a ghost who is determined to fix her life, even after she’s dead.