Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty (born November 1966) is an Australian author. She began her career in advertising and marketing before publishing her first novel, Three Wishes, in 2003. She has since written ten novels, which have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Four of Moriarty's novels—Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Last Anniversary, and Apples Never Fall—have been adapted into television series, and she was the first Australian author to debut in the top position on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Moriarty has been described as an author of women's fiction. Her novels typically feature middle-class suburban women as characters, and are often centred on a crime or mysterious death. Her writing frequently explores themes of domestic abuse, grief, and infertility.

Early life and education

Liane Moriarty was born in November 1966 as the eldest of six children. She grew up in Sydney, Australia, in a middle-class Catholic family. A review of the novel in Publishers Weekly described it as an enjoyable read with "quirky and lovable" characters but deemed its plot predictable. Moriarty published her second novel, The Last Anniversary, in 2005. The novel follows the Doughty family, who live on a remote Australian island and become famous and wealthy after adopting an abandoned infant, but are eventually torn apart by money problems and inheritance disputes. The novel received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, however, which said that Moriarty adeptly managed the relationships between her characters.

Between 2007 and 2010, Moriarty published a series of children's books in her "Nicola Berry" series. She published her next novel, What Alice Forgot, in 2010. The novel follows a woman who experiences amnesia and loses ten years of her memories after an accident. Her next novel The Hypnotist's Love Story, published in 2012, depicts a Sydney-based hypnotherapist who begins to be followed by the former partner of her new boyfriend.

Moriarty achieved her first major literary success in 2013 with the publication of her novel The Husband's Secret, which was optioned by CBS and became a bestseller. The novel follows a woman in suburban Sydney whose life is upturned after she opens a secret letter from her husband. The novel was adapted into an HBO series starring Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, and Nicole Kidman in 2017.

Moriarty released her next novel Truly Madly Guilty in 2016. The novel follows two best friends who attend a barbecue where conflicts break out among the attendees. A more positive review in The Washington Post described the novel as "emotionally riveting" and wrote that it featured a strong and relatable cast of characters. In 2018 Moriarty published Nine Perfect Strangers, a novel about a group of clients at an Australian spa resort. In The New York Times Book Review, Lisa Scottoline wrote that the novel featured characters who were "fully realized, with compelling lives, relationships and motivations", and raised interesting questions for the reader about cults and wellness. The novel was adapted into a Hulu series starring Nicole Kidman in 2021.

In 2021 Moriarty published her novel Apples Never Fall, which depicts the disappearance of a tennis-playing Sydney grandmother. In a review in The Guardian, Beejay Silcox wrote that while the novel was an enjoyable read, its subplot about a woman who falsely claims to be a victim of domestic abuse caused the novel to feel "indulgently overgarnished". The novel was adapted into a Peacock miniseries in 2024. Moriarty published her tenth novel, Here One Moment, in 2024, in which a woman predicts the time and cause of death of a group of passengers on a flight from Sydney to Hobart. The novel follows how the passengers react as her predictions begin to come true. In a review in The New York Times, the critic Leah Greenblatt wrote that the novel featured strong characters but felt like "a work in progress still searching for its final form". Despite their Australian setting, Moriarty's books were initially far more popular in the United States than in her home country.

Moriarty's novels often explore sources of trauma, including death and domestic violence, within the context of her characters' domestic lives. Women's grief and rage, social politics, and class tensions are all frequent themes of her writing.