After years of emotional anguish, Maggie Ippolitti is happy at last. Fully recovered from the postpartum psychosis that caused her to lose access to her beautiful baby daughter during a divorce from a diabolical man many years ago, Maggie has now remarried. Her new husband, Dr. Noah Alderman, a pediatric allergist, is everything she could ever want. Handsome, kind, intelligent and loving, Noah also knows what suffering is all about. When he lost his loving wife and the mother of his 10-year-old son, Caleb, to ovarian cancer four years ago, Noah wasn't sure he'd ever love again. Now, however, he and Maggie have made a real home and created a happy family.

Just when things seem as if they can’t get any better, Maggie receives a call from her now-17-year-old daughter, Anna. After being whisked away to France by her father when she was just a tot, Anna is back in the States and eager to get reacquainted with her mother at long last --- and Maggie is ready. Although she is scared that Anna may reject her due to her previous mental illness, Maggie is eager to tell Anna her side of the story. Having a chance to get to know the daughter she thought was lost to her forever is simply the final joyful event in what has become a fairy-tale life.

"AFTER ANNA is a top-notch story of suspense written by a master of the genre.... Lisa Scottoline holds us in her clutches right up until the last page is turned, the final question is answered, and a sigh of relief is breathed."

When Maggie and Noah learn the truth about Anna's life at Congreve, an exclusive girls' school in Maine, they quickly agree to take her into their home in Pennsylvania and make her a part of their family. Much to their chagrin, their act of loving kindness dooms them to almost-immediate misery and grief. While Anna initially appears to be a happy, loving teen, she's really a beautiful vixen who's determined to have her way at any cost. Before the dust from the impromptu move has settled, Anna comes between Noah and Maggie in ways that would have been inconceivable mere days ago. When conflicting tales of certain events arise, Maggie doesn't know who to believe --- the husband she has come to love and trust, or the daughter who is her own flesh and blood.

When Anna is murdered just weeks after the mother-daughter reunion, Noah is charged with the crime and Maggie's world falls apart. Suddenly she's more alone than ever. But having Caleb to raise and Noah's trial to get through keep her going through her bitter disappointment at losing the daughter with whom she had only just reconnected and the husband she had previously adored.

As Maggie is still struggling to absorb how strong and steady Noah could have murdered her precious daughter, an unexpected phone call reveals new information in what seemed to be an open-and-shut case and sends her rushing headlong into a nightmare she never could have anticipated. Will this new information answer Maggie's questions about the recent events of her life or simply add to the mysteries that swirl around her?

Told from the alternating points of view of Maggie and Noah, AFTER ANNA is a top-notch story of suspense written by a master of the genre. Unwilling to turn us loose (not even for a moment) after she quickly snags our attention early on, Lisa Scottoline holds us in her clutches right up until the last page is turned, the final question is answered, and a sigh of relief is breathed. While you may be worn out by the novel’s ups and downs, you'll no doubt be satisfied.