Nine Perfect Strangers

Notes From Your Bookseller\n\nAn unflinchingly honest character study of a group of people looking to change their lives for the better, filled to the brim with Moriarty's trademark wit and tense atmosphere. The nine perfect strangers soon find themselves forming unbreakable bonds and undergoing entirely unexpected transformations in this perceptive page-turner.\n\n \n\nNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER\nNow a Hulu original series \n\n"If three characters were good in Big Little Lies, nine are even better in Nine Perfect Strangers." -Lisa Scottoline, The New York Times Book Review\n\nFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies\n\nCould ten days at a health resort really change you forever? In Liane Moriarty's latest page-turner, nine perfect strangers are about to find out...\n\nNine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can't even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.\n\nFrances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and an exquisitely painful paper cut. She's immediately intrigued by her fellow guests. Most of them don't look to be in need of a health resort at all. But the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers Frances didn't even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer - or should she run while she still can?\n\nIt's not long before every guest at Tranquillum House is asking exactly the same question.\n\nCombining all of the hallmarks that have made her writing a go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp, Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers once again shows why she is a master of her craft.\n\nEditorial Reviews\n\n2018 Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist: Best Fiction\n\nBest of 2018: People, Publishers Weekly, Glamour, Real Simple, PopSugar, Kobo, LitHub\n\nBest of Fall: Goodreads, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Elle, USA Today, Harper's Bazaar, AARP, CrimeReads, BookRiot, PureWow, InStyle, Bustle, and Refinery29\n\n"A treat for Big Little Lies fans....Witty and poignant, Moriarty's storytelling is worth every penny." -People, Book of the Week\n\n"[A] smart and suspenseful page-turner." -Woman's World\n\n"An entrancing read...An early holiday present for Moriarty fans, Nine Perfect Strangers is a darkly comical novel that defies classification. It manages to be wildly funny and richly emotional at the same time, proving that the Big Little Lies author still has a lot to offer her readers." -Bustle\n\n"As she did in Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty writes compelling, realistic characters. Readers will devour Nine Perfect Strangers." -Real Simple\n\n"Moriarty is back with another page-turner." -TIME\n\n"Irresistible." -Entertainment Weekly\n\n"Liane Moriarty is a master of sustained tension." -Washington Post\n\n"Promises to be a lively page-turner." -Vogue\n\n"A cannily plotted, continually surprising, and frequently funny page-turner and a deeply satisfying thriller. Moriarty delivers yet another surefire winner." -Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review\n\n"Liane Moriarty serves up laughs, thrills, surprises." -Associated Press\n\n"Each reveal is a delicious surprise...Nine Perfect Strangers is so well written and slyly constructed that it won't feel like enough." -Booklist\n\n"This latest work from the author of Big Little Lies makes us cower, laugh, reflect, cry, and fall in love right alongside the characters." -Family Circle\n\n"Can't wait for Season 2 of Big Little Lies? Satisfy your craving with Moriarty's new novel. At a remote health resort, nine people gather, eager for change. Despite the luxurious new-age comforts that surround them, each realizes that the next 10 days will be tougher than they could ever imagine. Things may not be what they seem in this addictive read." -Observer\n\n"The wildly popular Big Little Lies author is back with another irresistible story that's both suspenseful and surprisingly funny." -AARP's The Girlfriend\n\n"No one writes about the minutiae of women's lives with quite as much insight and pull as Moriarty, who wrote Big Little Lies, and yet again her slow-burning plotting leaves you gasping at the very end. I'm jealous of anyone who hasn't read this yet." -Grazia (UK)\n\n"Liane Moriarty is simply unparalleled at infusing flawed characters with humor and heartbreak. Her singular brand of storytelling was most recently showcased when her bestselling novel Big Little Lies was made into an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries. Nine Perfect Strangers is a worthy follow-up, offering an irresistible take on our wellness-obsessed culture, where the weirder the treatment, the better." -BookPage\n\n"Nine Perfect Strangers has everything I look for in a Moriarty novel: colorful, relatable characters and a page-turning narrative infused with humor and warmth...a wise, wonderfully immersive read." -Augusta Chronicle\n\n"Readers and movie stars alike cannot get enough of Moriarty and her addictive novels, which explore the secrets of suburbia with wit, empathy, and enough plot twists to have Alfred Hitchcock applauding from the grave." -San Diego Union-Tribune\n\n"Liane Moriarty is a serious talent...[She] paints a picture with color, sound, aroma, mood, and fragments of the characters' inner monologues, telling us their stories in quick details while the transformation goes off the rails." -News & Observer\n\n"Liane Moriarty seamlessly leads the reader through an unpredictable maze of struggles with love, loss, and understanding. Her pacing, character development, and knack for packing a surprise punch will keep readers engaging in literary therapy by turning the pages late into the night." -Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\n\nPraise for Liane Moriarty's Novels:\n\n"Funny and scary." -Stephen King\n"Sharply intelligent." -Entertainment Weekly\n"Irresistible." -People\n"Simply exquisite." -Bookreporter\n"Powerful." -The Washington Post\n"Brilliant." -Sophie Hannah\n"Gob-smacking." -BookPage\n"Superb." -Parade\n"Spellbinding." -Emily Giffin\n"Gripping." -Oprah.com\n"A wonderful writer." -Anne Lamott\n"Like drinking a pink cosmo laced with arsenic." -USA Today\n"Mesmerizing." -Family Circle\n"So, so good."-Jojo Moyes\n"The ferocity that Ms. Moriarty brings...is shocking." -New York Times\n- From the Publisher\n\nOne of the most satisfying aspects of Nine Perfect Strangers is that it is thought-provoking but never pedantic. The novel raises fascinating questions about our relentless quest for self-improvement, why we seek out others to transform us and whether external change causes internal change, or vice versa. Does social media make followers of us all? When does a group become a cult, and why? Moriarty doesn't supply the answers, but trusts her readers to come up with their own, which is just as it should be.\n- The New York Times Book Review - Lisa Scottoline\n\n*09/24/2018\nSend a motley crew of hurting but comfortably heeled Aussies to a secluded resort for a pricey 10-day "Mind and Body Total Transformation Retreat" and what happens? In this cannily plotted, continually surprising, and frequently funny page-turner from bestseller Moriarty (Big Little Lies), nothing like the restorative reset they're anticipating. The nine guests at Tranquillum House include middle-aged romance writer Frances Welty, her normal spunkiness shaken by recent personal and professional setbacks, and 20-year-old Zoe Marconi, there with her parents on the anniversary of the family tragedy that shattered their lives. What they haven't reckoned on is Tanquillum House's messianic but precariously stable director, whose secret agenda could be dangerous to their health. It would be unsporting to disclose more about Moriarty's largely endearing cast, since her progressive revelations about them contribute so much toward making this such a deeply satisfying thriller. Moriarty delivers yet another surefire winner. Author tour. Agent: Faye Bender, Faye Bender Literary. (Nov.)\n- Publishers Weekly\n\nNine people seeking escape gather at a health resort for a ten-day retreat, but the fanatical resort director's devotion to "transformation" leads to some surprising turns. Narrator Caroline Lee's animated performance brings listeners along as the story changes perspective; all the guests, plus the resort's three staff members, have point-of-view chapters. Lee is especially memorable as Frances Welty, a cheerful, snarky romance novelist; Masha, the mysterious resort owner; and Jessica Chandler, a young, image-obsessed lottery winner with the habit of ending most of her sentences with a question. Lee uses her full vocal range-multiple accents and a variety of pitches and tones-even going so far as to let her voice crack and break. Listeners will be hooked as the retreat begins to unravel. E.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine\n- DECEMBER 2018 - AudioFile\n\n2018-11-15\n\nNine people gather at a luxurious health resort in the Australian bushland. Will they have sex, fall in love, get killed, or maybe just lose weight?\n\nMoriarty (Truly Madly Guilty, 2014, etc.) is known for darkly humorous novels set in the suburbs of Sydney--though her most famous book, Big Little Lies (2014), has been transported to Monterey, California, by Reese Witherspoon's HBO series. Her new novel moves away from the lives of prosperous parents to introduce a more eclectic group of people who've signed up for a 10-day retreat at Tranquillium House, a remote spa run by the messianic Masha, "an extraordinary-looking woman. A supermodel. An Olympic athlete. At least six feet tall, with corpse-like white skin and green eyes so striking and huge they were almost alien-like." This was the moment when the guests should probably have fled, but they all decided to stay (perhaps because their hefty payments were nonrefundable?). The book's title is slightly misleading, since not all the guests are strangers to each other. There are two family groups: Ben and Jessica Chandler, a young couple whose relationship broke down after they won the lottery, and the Marconis, Napolean and Heather and their 20-year-old daughter, Zoe, who are trying to recover after the death of Zoe's twin brother, Zach. Carmel Schneider is a divorced housewife who wants to get her mojo back, Lars Lee is an abnormally handsome divorce lawyer who's addicted to spas, and Tony Hogburn is a former professional footballer who wants to get back into shape. Though all these people have their own chapters, the main character is Frances Welty, a romance writer who needs a pick-me-up after having had her latest novel rejected and having been taken in by an internet scam--she fell in love with a man she met on Facebook and sent money to help his (nonexistent) son, who'd been in a (nonexistent) car accident. How humiliating for a writer to fall for a fictional person, Frances thinks, in her characteristically wry way. When the guests arrive, they're given blood tests (why?) and told they're going to start off with a five-day "noble silence" in which they're not even supposed to make eye contact with each other. As you can imagine, something fishy is going on, and while Moriarty displays her usual humor and Frances in particular is an appealing character, it's all a bit ridiculous. \n\nFun to read, as always with Moriarty's books, but try not to think about it or it will stop making sense.\n\n- Kirkus Reviews