Liane Moriarty

Born in Sydney, Australia, Liane Moriarty always loved to read. It was only after finishing school and working in marketing and advertising that she realized that she loved to write as well. She enrolled in a Masters program at Macquarie University in Sydney and, as part of that program, wrote her first novel, Three Wishes. That book, featuring triplet sisters and their domestic relationships, was published in 2009 and fell nicely into the 'chick lit' genre. Also around this time, she began to publish middle grade fiction in the form of the 'Space Brigade' series featuring young heroine Nicola Berry. Moriarty's adult novels, however, remained her focus. The Last Anniversary, published in 2010, still maintained the tropes of chick lit (focusing on multiple female leads and their domestic troubles), but also incorporated a mystery and some darkness into the frequently bubbly genre. What Alice Forgot (2010) and The Hypnotist's Love Story (2012) built on this derivation from the genre, with some truly sobering and dark moments, but it was The Husband's Secret, published in 2013, that readers couldn't put down. That novel, about on a woman who reads her husband's 'only open after my death' letter before he dies, became an international bestseller and reached number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. The film rights were taken by CBS Films. In 2014, Moriarty's sixth novel was published. Big Little Lies again effectively mined the darker edges of the domestic lives of women, this time revolving around an Australian kindergarten. The book garnered rave reviews and the film rights were quickly snapped up by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman.