13 Best Liane Moriarty Books by Australia’s Leading Novelist

From suburbia to secrets, the Best Liane Moriarty Books chart an Australian career defined by domestic puzzles and moral forked paths. Liane Moriarty, born in Sydney, writes contemporary fiction and domestic suspense that peers into marriages, friendships, and communities under stress, with signature titles such as “Big Little Lies” and “The Husband’s Secret,” and a career running from the early 2000s to the present. Drawing on suburban settings and intersecting storylines, she has also written a children’s trilogy under the Nicola Berry banner alongside her adult novels. Her work is commonly filed as contemporary fiction, mystery, and domestic noir, and is set largely around Sydney and its suburbs. She is widely known for cross-cutting perspectives and slow revelations that bend everyday routines into crises with legal, moral, and emotional stakes. Readers who arrive via TV adaptations often loop back to earlier titles, then debate reading order and entry points. For that purpose, this ranked report spotlights the Best Liane Moriarty Books as a single, navigable map. It pulls together core facts about each story while keeping spoilers out of sight.

Her international breakout came with “The Husband’s Secret,” while “Big Little Lies” became the most visible title after its HBO adaptation, followed by momentum from “Nine Perfect Strangers.” Across the list, marriages, parenthood, classroom politics, friendship circles, and long-buried histories recur as engines of consequence. Readers still care because domestic turning points mirror ordinary lives sharpened by one withheld truth. This guide includes 13 titles drawn from her adult novels and the Nicola Berry trilogy. It is sequenced in rising rating order, ties by year then title, and built from publicly visible reader data. For clarity and consistency, the Best Liane Moriarty Books appears as a compact canon you can scan before you choose. For an at-a-glance bibliography and covers, see the author’s official site.

13 Best Liane Moriarty Books in a Rising Rating Order

Methodology & Updates

Ratings were captured from Goodreads on October 17, 2025, with eligibility set at 3.0 or higher and ordering strictly by average rating, ties by year then title; sources were cross-checked with the author’s official bibliography to verify publication years and series names. Because community ratings evolve, minor shifts may occur over time; periodic refreshes will keep the Best Liane Moriarty Books aligned with the latest data.

#1) Nine Perfect Strangers – 2018

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2018
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, domestic suspense, ensemble drama
• Themes: reinvention, control, wellness culture
• Goodreads Rating: 3.56/5

At an isolated Australian wellness resort called Tranquillum House, nine guests arrive seeking transformation under the eye of its director Masha. An austere regimen and unconventional therapies quickly unsettle the group and expose private histories that collide inside the retreat schedule. Each guest pursues relief from grief, failure, addiction, or stalled relationships while staff push a radical program promising breakthroughs. Shifting alliances form among strangers whose secrets tangle as imposed rules and surveillance intensify within the compound. Midway through, clandestine methods escalate the experiment and force participants to confront truths they arrived to avoid. Risks mount as a medical and ethical line is crossed, setting off a chain that compels the group to act collectively. A crisis point gathers the guests toward a decisive confrontation with the program’s logic and its charismatic leader without revealing the final turn. Afterwards, lives diverge with consequences shaped by choices made under pressure and the narratives they will tell about what happened.

#2) Truly Madly Guilty – 2016

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2016
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, domestic drama, mystery frame
• Themes: guilt, marriage, friendship
• Goodreads Rating: 3.60/5

Three couples attend a winter backyard barbecue in suburban Sydney where small frictions precede an incident that reshapes their ties. A cross-cut timeline moves between the aftermath and the day itself, holding back the precise event that left everyone rattled. Clementine balances family and career pressure while Erika struggles with boundaries, and their husbands manage competing loyalties. Neighbors and bystanders supply fragments that widen the lens on responsibility and complicity during a few charged minutes. As investigations and self-reproach mount, each pair replays choices, bargains with blame, and measures the cost of silence. Family routines strain as legal and social scrutiny sharpen private doubts into open conflicts and late-night reckonings. The reveal arrives as a causal thread rather than a twist, reframing small actions and the simple physics of attention. The final passages trace the longer shadow cast by a single afternoon and the tentative repairs the group can bear.

#3) The Hypnotist’s Love Story – 2011

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2011
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, relationship drama, psychological thread
• Themes: obsession, trust, blended family
• Goodreads Rating: 3.71/5

Sydney hypnotherapist Ellen begins dating Patrick, a single father still entangled with his ex-partner Saskia, who has been shadowing his life. What starts as an odd detail becomes a fixed presence as Saskia watches from a distance, posts small gifts, and appears at routine places. Ellen wants honesty and equilibrium while Patrick tries to protect his son, and both weigh the risks of naming the behavior outright. Narration folds in Saskia’s perspective, revealing motives that complicate the threat and map the emotional loops that sustain it. A series of encounters intensifies scrutiny from police and friends, raising questions about boundaries that a court order cannot settle alone. The pattern escalates toward a confrontation that forces all three to choose safety over pride and clarity over longing. A climactic encounter tests Ellen’s willingness to trust her methods in a crisis without detailing the final outcome. The story closes on the rearranged terms of connection that follow an obsession brought into daylight.

#4) Apples Never Fall – 2021

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2021
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, family mystery, suburban drama
• Themes: sibling rivalry, missing person, legacy
• Goodreads Rating: 3.75/5

In a tennis-mad Brisbane family, matriarch Joy Delaney disappears after months of tension and the abrupt arrival of a young houseguest named Savannah. Her husband Stan, a retired coach, becomes a focal point for suspicion as their four adult children reassemble old grievances. Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke piece together recent events, including Joy’s texts and Savannah’s secrets, to test competing explanations. Flashbacks to the parents’ coaching life and marriages supply threads that crisscross with neighborhood chatter and police queries. New evidence and misread memories upend tidy narratives the siblings prefer, drawing them into confrontations they have long deferred. The investigation tightens around the family home, where motives rooted in loyalty and resentment collide. A turning point redirects the search and forces a reckoning with what the Delaneys chose to see and ignore, avoiding the ultimate reveal. The resolution leaves the tennis dynasty altered by what surfaced and by who stepped forward when it mattered.

#5) Three Wishes – 2004

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2004
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, family comedy drama, contemporary
• Themes: sisterhood, identity, midlife pivots
• Goodreads Rating: 3.78/5

In Sydney, thirty-three-year-old triplets Lyn, Cat, and Gemma juggle career ambitions, marriages, and odd jobs as their birthday approaches. A restaurant celebration erupts into a public scene that sends the sisters to hospital and ripples through their intertwined lives. Cat weighs the fallout from a marital crisis while Lyn manages perfectionist routines and Gemma drifts between commitments and chance. Parents and partners feed the push-pull of loyalty and rivalry as secrets and pregnancies complicate familiar roles. Flashbacks layer the sisters’ childhood with present decisions that threaten the pact of always being on one another’s side. A misstep and a confession reframe who is rescuing whom and how the trio absorbs shocks differently. Tensions crest at another gathering that tests forgiveness without detailing the final choice each sister makes. After the dust settles, the Kettle family recalibrates what long-term closeness means in practice.

#6) The Last Anniversary – 2005

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2005
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, family mystery, small-town setting
• Themes: secrets, belonging, inheritance
• Goodreads Rating: 3.78/5

Sophie Honeywell unexpectedly inherits a house on Scribbly Gum Island, home to the famous Munro Baby mystery that sustains the local tourist trade. Island matriarchs guard the origin story while neighbors and relatives stage the anniversary spectacle that keeps the legend alive. Sophie navigates a new community, a past romance, and an uneasy role in the family at the heart of the riddle. Competing versions of the founding event emerge through journals, gossip, and carefully curated tours that privilege one narrative. A side story involving postpartum depression and hidden caretaking recasts how the island manages appearances and pain. As clues line up, loyalties split between preserving a myth and acknowledging the costs of the performance. The final reveal is foreshadowed through artifacts and offhand remarks, and it rewrites which bonds the island values most. The aftermath settles into a quieter arrangement that respects truth while keeping commerce turning.

#7) Nicola Berry and the Shocking Trouble on the Planet of Shobble – 2009

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2009
• Work Type / Genre Tags: children’s novel, space adventure, series installment
• Themes: courage, justice, teamwork
• Goodreads Rating: 3.79/5

Nicola Berry and the Space Brigade are summoned to the snowy planet of Shobble, where contentment masks an authoritarian grip. A glittering surface hides labor rules and a leader whose decrees threaten dissenters and the planet’s fragile balance. Nicola and friends are tasked with choosing between diplomatic niceties and direct action to protect locals placed at risk. New allies reveal the costs of enforced happiness and the mechanisms used to silence protest across the icebound cities. A daring plan puts the team inside the regime’s showcase venues to trigger a nonviolent unmasking of the truth. Complications force split-second decisions that test each Brigade member’s strengths and loyalties. A public confrontation exposes what was hidden and opens a path to reform without recounting the specific end move. The group departs with a promise to return, leaving Shobble to decide how freedom will look in practice.

#8) The Husband’s Secret – 2013

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2013
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, domestic suspense, interlinked stories
• Themes: conscience, consequence, chance
• Goodreads Rating: 3.95/5

Sydney mother Cecilia Fitzpatrick discovers a sealed letter from her husband John-Paul to be opened only after his death. The contents point to a long-ago tragedy that connects the lives of Cecilia, grieving grandmother Rachel, and restless wife Tess. Each woman confronts what the truth would do to her family, forcing calculations that pit safety against justice. Paths intersect at school events and kitchen tables where ordinary routines brush up against an irreversible fact. Old timelines come back to claim debts as the three stories twist toward a shared reckoning. A choice made in private reverberates through a neighborhood that prefers smiles to scrutiny. The climax arrives as a moral crossroads with lives at stake, without giving away the letter’s exact terms. An epilogue traces the fragile role of coincidence in what people believe they deserve and what they can forgive.

Momentum Builds in the Best Liane Moriarty Books

#9) Nicola Berry and the Petrifying Problem with Princess Petronella – 2007

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2007
• Work Type / Genre Tags: children’s novel, space adventure, series opener
• Themes: environment, diplomacy, ingenuity
• Goodreads Rating: 4.00/5

Earth is threatened when Princess Petronella of Planet Globagaskar plans to dump her world’s garbage onto the planet as a convenience. Nicola Berry is recruited as Earthling Ambassador and assembles the Space Brigade to counter the royal decree. Traveling through portals and palaces, the team seeks leverage that will sway a stubborn princess raised to expect obedience. Allies inside the court reveal traditions and loopholes that could force a better bargain for both planets. The Brigade navigates traps and etiquette puzzles to land a hearing that can overturn the plan without a fight. A sudden complication tests whether kindness can outmaneuver protocol when the clock runs down. The showdown hinges on a clever reframing of costs and benefits rather than force, keeping the details offstage. The result secures Earth’s safety and leaves open future cooperation between distant worlds.

#10) Here One Moment – 2024

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2024
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, ensemble drama, fate and free will
• Themes: mortality, coincidence, connection
• Goodreads Rating: 4.00/5

During a commercial flight, an older woman calmly tells fellow passengers the age and cause of their future deaths. The startled travelers later connect through a social-media group as some test the prophecies and others try to forget them. A widowed mother, a doctor, a student, and an anxious commuter anchor intersecting arcs shaped by fear and defiance. Memories and near-misses accumulate as characters make bargains with risk and look for patterns in random days. New information complicates whether the predictions are hoax, intuition, or data gathered by stealth. Relationships fray and deepen as choices about love and work are pulled forward by the ticking certainty of the claims. The story crests at a moment that forces the group to act, leaving the precise mechanics of truth unresolved. After the flight’s aftermath, lives settle into altered plans that honor losses and reconsider second chances.

The Crest: Best Liane Moriarty Books Near the Top

#11) What Alice Forgot – 2009

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2009
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, contemporary drama, memory story
• Themes: identity, marriage, second chances
• Goodreads Rating: 4.07/5

After a fall at a gym, Alice Love wakes to discover she has lost a decade of memories and is no longer the newlywed she remembers being. She learns she has three children and is separated from her husband Nick, with friendships and routines she does not recognize. Alice sets out to reconstruct the missing years, starting with the changes that hardened her and the fight she cannot recall. Sister Elisabeth’s fertility struggles and letters add context that reframes what Alice thought she wanted. A school community and a charity project supply scenes where old promises collide with present habits. Hints mount that a single conflict pushed the marriage past a point Alice would once have thought impossible. The path to confrontation forces her to choose what to keep from the person she became without replaying the final steps. A closing decision suggests how memory and kindness might rebuild a family on new terms.

#12) Nicola Berry and the Wicked War on the Planet of Whimsy – 2010

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2010
• Work Type / Genre Tags: children’s novel, space adventure, rescue mission
• Themes: loyalty, courage, peace-making
• Goodreads Rating: 4.11/5

After hearing that Shimlara’s family has been kidnapped, Nicola Berry leads the Space Brigade to the twin worlds of Whimsy and Volcomania. The team discovers a lopsided conflict between poetic dreamers and volcanic warriors that hides political exploitation. Cross-planet travel and coded messages pull the Brigade through traps toward a prison camp hidden in scenic terrain. Allies inside both cultures show how misunderstandings harden into war unless someone reframes the stakes. A high-risk infiltration presses each member to improvise while keeping innocents out of the crossfire. Mechanical failures and double-crosses nearly wreck the rescue before an opening appears. The final push turns on wit and empathy over force, withholding the last maneuver to preserve the adventure’s surprise. In the end, families are reunited and a fragile peace takes root between the once-opposed planets.

#13) Big Little Lies – 2014

• Author: Liane Moriarty
• Published: 2014
• Work Type / Genre Tags: novel, domestic noir, school-gate mystery
• Themes: bullying, violence, complicity
• Goodreads Rating: 4.31/5

At a coastal primary school’s fundraiser night, a death occurs that rewinds the story to months of rivalries among parents. Single mother Jane befriends fierce Madeline and elegant Celeste as accusations of playground bullying split the community. Whisper networks and classroom politics entwine with a custody battle and the private strain inside a glamorous marriage. Interviews and chorus-like commentary from townspeople intercut scenes that build toward the gala’s breaking point. As secrets spill, alliances shift around a question of who is lying and who is protecting whom. Legal and personal stakes converge on a terrace where competing versions of the same night collide. The climax resolves the whodunnit frame while redirecting blame in a way that protects victims without naming the turn. Afterwards, the town absorbs the cost as families choose silence or confession about what really happened.

Liane Moriarty: Life & Legacy

Liane Moriarty was born in Sydney in 1966, worked in advertising and copywriting, and completed a master’s at Macquarie University before publishing “Three Wishes” in 2004; subsequent novels include “The Last Anniversary,” “What Alice Forgot,” “The Hypnotist’s Love Story,” “The Husband’s Secret,” “Big Little Lies,” “Truly Madly Guilty,” “Nine Perfect Strangers,” “Apples Never Fall,” and “Here One Moment,” alongside the Nicola Berry trilogy for younger readers. Her core forms are contemporary novels with braided points of view and children’s space adventures, often orbiting secrets inside families, friendship groups, and schools. Signature works reached #1 on bestseller lists and seeded major screen adaptations, expanding her readership globally. Across two decades, she has advanced the domestic mystery toward ensemble storytelling built from ordinary routines and plausible shocks. As an influence, she helped normalize suburb-set suspense centered on relationships and community institutions. In classrooms and book clubs, discussions dwell on moral ambiguity, bystander choices, and the accumulated weight of small decisions that power the Best Liane Moriarty Books.

Conclusion

This ranked guide assembles 13 titles spanning 2004 to 2024, moving from early family comedies through mid-career mysteries to recent ensembles; at a glance, the arc runs from first experiments to established forms to consensus peaks near the top. For further background on the author’s life and bibliography, readers can consult the updated Encyclopaedia Britannica profile of Liane Moriarty, which situates her career in context while pointing to signature works. In short, the Best Liane Moriarty Books here map a progression readers can use to plan what to pick up next.

Across the list, recurrent subjects include marriage under strain, friendship dynamics, schoolyard conflicts, and the unpredictable math of guilt and responsibility; together they sketch a range that moves from intimate domestic puzzles to broader ensemble crises. For a recent journalistic overview tied to a new release, see NPR’s coverage of “Here One Moment”, which captures how current themes extend earlier preoccupations without repeating their plots. Taken together, the Best Liane Moriarty Books outline how one writer turned familiar settings into high-stakes storytelling.

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