Big Little Lies (40 page)

As always, I am so grateful to all the wonderful, talented people at Amy Einhorn Books, with special thanks to the amazing Amy Einhorn herself, as well as Liz Stein and Katie McKee.

Thank you to my agent, Faye Bender, and my publishers and editors around the world, especially Cate Paterson, Celine Kelly, and Maxine Hitchcock.

Thank you so much to Cherie Penney, Marisa Vella, Maree Atkins, Ingrid Bown, and Mark Davidson for generously giving up your time so I could benefit from your various professional fields of expertise.

I have a terrible habit of scavenging through conversations looking for material. Thank you, Mary Hassal, Emily Crocker, and Liz Frizell for allowing me to borrow tiny pieces of your life for fictional purpose. Now seems like a good time to make clear that the parents at the lovely school where my children currently attend are
nothing
like the parents at Pirriwee Public, and are disappointingly well-behaved at school functions.

Thank you to Mum, Dad, Kati, Fiona, Sean, and Nicola, with special thanks to my sister, the brilliant author Jaclyn Moriarty, who always has been and always will be my very first reader.

Thank you to Anna Kuper for making my life so much easier in so many ways.

Thank you to fellow authors and friends Ber Carroll and Dianne Blacklock for turning book tours into girls weekends away. (Ber even manages to make
shopping
fun.) We produce a joint newsletter called
Book Chat
. To subscribe, visit my website at www.lianemoriarty.com.

Thank you to Adam, George, and Anna for making my world complete. And kind of loud and crazy.

In the end, this novel turned out to be a story about friendship, so I’m dedicating it to my friend Margaret Palisi, with whom I share thirty-five years of memories.

The following books were useful to me in writing this novel:
“Not to People Like Us”: Hidden Abuse in Upscale Marriages
by Susan Weitzman (2000) and
Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free
by Elaine Weiss (2004).

Liane Moriarty is the author of five novels,
The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotist’s Love Story,
and the best-selling
Three Wishes
and
The Husband’s Secret
.
The Husband’s Secret
reached number one on the
New York Times
best-sellers list, was a number one best seller in the UK, has sold close to two million copies worldwide, has been optioned for a film, and will be translated into more than thirty-five languages. Moriarty lives in Sydney with her husband, son, and
daughter.