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Liane Moriarty is an Australian author with 6 international best-selling adult fiction novels. Her most recent works include The Husband’s Secret and Big Little Lies. Her books contain wit, humor, mystery and the loveliness and grittiness of marriages, friendships, families and everyday relationships. She often shows how people’s lives can become intertwined by seemingly simple choices and little twists of fate. Her books will make you laugh out loud and feel a deep connection with how well she seems to understand the human spirit. I have read four of her six novels and have enjoyed every one of them. Liane is an author you should take a chance on-you will be happy you did!

The Last Anniversary

This is the 2nd of Liane’s novels, written in 2006. The story takes place on the fictional Scribbly Gum Island in Australia. It is a small island owned and inhabited by a single unconventional family and made famous by the unsolved mystery of the Munro Baby. The parents of the child simply disappeared one day without a trace with the teapot still whistling on the stovetop and their baby asleep in her crib. The two sisters who found the baby end up raising her and using the mystery to make the island a tourist attraction, complete with tours of the untouched house and plenty of freshly baked goodies to choose from afterwards. As it turns out, there are many secrets being kept on the island of Scribbly Gum. Australian Women’s Weekly describe it as an “endearing story, like life, is a mix of the sad, the happy, the absurd, and the magical.”

What Alice Forgot

So far, this has been my favorite of Moriarty’s novels. It begins when thirty-nine year old Alice has an accident at the gym and passes out, falling off her bike during a vigorous spinning class. When she comes to, she doesn’t recognize the people around her, the clothes she has on, or even what she is doing at a gym of all places-she never works out. The fall has made her lose the last 10 years of her memories. She has no recollection of the 3 children that call her Mummy, the fancy house and car that seem to be hers, or the reasons why her marriage fell apart. She wakes up as a much nicer and more innocent person than the woman who fell off her bike. Her family and friends are sure this new/old Alice will be short-lived and disappear once she gets her memory back. This story is an interesting, heart-wrenching, and often hilarious look at how our life can become something we never expected it to be.

The Husband’s Secret

“Marriage is a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.” -The Husband’s Secret

Cecelia Fitzpatrick has a perfect life with a perfect husband, perfect children, and a perfect career. She is happy as everything seems to be in its place and her life is proceeding as planned...until she finds a letter her husband meant for her to read only after he had died. Except he is still very much alive. The simple act of reading this letter changes Cecelia’s life forever when she discovers a dark secret about her beloved husband. Is Cecelia’s love for her husband enough to keep their lives intact after she knows the truth?

Big Little Lies

You learn at the beginning of the story that there was a murder at a school fundraiser. This story is told by many voices of characters living in suburbia as you try to piece together the days leading up to the murder. Once again, Moriarty demonstrates how conflicts, secrets, and betrayals can poison relationships and how the characters chose to deal with these struggles, often by pretending that they do not exist. The novel is a juicy mystery with plenty of humor, drama, and some great twists along the way.

Liane’s other titles are Three Wishes and The Hypnotist’s Love Story. The Yankton Community Library owns all of Liane Moriarty’s titles, often in various forms including books, audiobooks, and e-books.