Liane Moriarty

Liane was born on a beautiful November day in 1966 in Sydney. A few hours after she was born, she smiled directly at her father through the nursery glass window, which is remarkable, seeing as most babies can’t even focus their eyes at that age.

Her first word was ‘glug’. This was faithfully recorded in the baby book kept by her mother. (As the eldest of the six children, Liane was the only one to get a baby book so she likes to refer to it often).

As a child, she loved to read, so much so that school friends would cruelly hide their books when she came to play. She still doesn’t know how to go to sleep at night without first reading a novel for a very long time in a very hot bath.

She can’t remember the first story she ever wrote, but she does remember her first publishing deal. Her father ‘commissioned’ her to write a novel for him and paid her an advance of $1.00. She wrote a three volume epic called, ‘The Mystery of Dead Man’s Island’

After leaving school, Liane began a career in advertising and marketing. She became quite corporate for a while, wore suits and worried a lot about the size of her office. She eventually left her position as marketing manager of a legal publishing company to run her own (not especially successful) business called The Little Ad Agency. After that she worked as (a more successful, thankfully) freelance advertising copywriter, writing everything from websites and TV commercials to the back of the Sultana Bran box.

Liane’s first novel Liane & Jaclyn

In August 2013 Liane’s fifth novel The Husband’s Secret was released in the US and within two weeks had climbed the charts to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Much champagne was drunk.

The Husband’s Secret went on to sell over 3 million copies worldwide. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and was a top 10 bestseller in the UK where it was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. CBS Films has optioned the film rights.

Her next novel, Big Little Lies was published in July 2014 and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, making Liane the first Australian author to have a novel debut in the top spot in the US. Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon snapped up the film and television rights. Liane was so dazzled by their combined star power she became briefly disoriented but recovered in time to accept their offer.

The hardcover editions of Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret, along with the paperback edition of “What Alice Forgot” appeared simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list during 2014, making Liane one of the few authors in the world to ever have three books on the New York Times bestseller lists at the same time.