{"product_id":"9780544484061","title":"Next Life Might Be Kinder","description":"\u003cbr\u003e“After my wife, Elizabeth Church, was murdered by the bellman Alfonse Padgett in the Essex Hotel, she did not leave me.” \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSam Lattimore meets Elizabeth Church in 1970s Halifax, in an art gallery. The sparks are immediate, leading quickly to a marriage that is dear, erotically charged, and brief.  In Howard Norman’s spellbinding and moving novel, the gleam of the marriage and the circumstances of Elizabeth’s murder are revealed in heart-stopping increments. Sam’s life afterward is complicated. For one thing, in a moment of desperate confusion, he sells his life story to a Norwegian filmmaker named Istvakson, known for the stylized violence of his films, whose artistic drive sets in motion an increasingly intense cat-and-mouse game between the two men. For another, Sam has begun “seeing” Elizabeth—not only seeing but holding conversations with her, almost every evening, and watching her line up books on a small beach. What at first seems simply hallucination born of terrible grief reveals itself, evening by evening, as something else entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNext Life Might Be Kinder\u003c\/i\u003e is a story of murder, desperate faith, the afterlife, and of love as absolute redemption—from one of our most compelling storytellers at the height of his talents.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47012283154672,"sku":"9780544484061","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780544484061_p0.jpg?v=1763712098","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780544484061","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}