Here One Moment

by Liane Moriarty Narrated by Not Yet Available

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

From the author of Apples Never Fall and Nine Perfect Strangers comes a mesmerizing tale of life, love and our fragile mortality.

“A riveting story so wild you don't know how she'll land it, and then she does, on a dime.”-Anne Lamott, #1 New York Times bestselling author

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future-age 103!-and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.”

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn't exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn't drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty's Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can't-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 07/15/2024

A woman upends strangers’ lives by predicting their deaths in the powerful latest from bestseller Moriarty (Apples Never Fall). Travelers aboard a delayed flight from Hobart, Australia, to Sydney are already on edge when a woman stands, points at a fellow passenger, and pronounces, “I expect catastrophic stroke. Age seventy-two.” She moves down the aisle, foretelling the causes and ages of death of several more passengers before the cabin crew intervenes. She then sleeps until landing and disembarks as though nothing had happened. Most assume the “soothsayer” has mental health problems—until one of her prognostications comes true three months later. Everyone is rattled, but none more than the other passengers she hit with premonitions: a nurse apparently slated to get terminal cancer, a young mother and swim instructor whose child will supposedly drown, and starry-eyed newlyweds whose marriage (which their families look down upon) will purportedly end in “intimate partner homicide.” Moriarty’s meticulously plotted tale—which follows each of the doomed passengers as they reckon with their alleged fate—rivets even as it thoughtfully contemplates free will, determinism, and the value of living passionately. The exquisitely rendered characters earn readers’ full investment as they contemplate how much credence to give the Damoclean sword hanging over their heads, and the pinwheeling narrative maintains near-constant tension. Moriarty has outdone herself. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Here One Moment

“A riveting story so wild you don’t know how she’ll land it, and then she does, on a dime.”—Anne Lamott, #1 New York Times bestselling author
 
“Funny, frightening, heartbreaking, and life-affirming. I adored Here One Moment.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

“Liane Moriarty is a genuine GENIUS. Here One Moment is off-the-scale brilliant.” —Marian Keyes, international bestselling author of Watermelon and Again, Rachel

“The story is a brilliant, charming, and invigorating illustration of its closing quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (we’re not going to spill that). A fresh, funny, ambitious, and nuanced take on some of our oldest existential questions.”―Kirkus Review, starred review

“. . . meticulously plotted . . . exquisitely rendered characters . . . Moriarty has outdone herself.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review


Liane Moriarty’s novels are:

“Irresistible.”—People

“Sharply intelligent.”—Entertainment Weekly

“So, so good.”—Jojo Moyes

“The ferocity that Ms. Moriarty brings . . . is shocking.”—The New York Times

“Like drinking a pink cosmo laced with arsenic.”—USA Today

“Gob-smacking.”—BookPage

“Brilliant.”—Sophie Hannah

“Mesmerizing.”—Family Circle

“A master of mystery.”—Vulture

“Superb.”—Parade

“Funny and scary.”—Stephen King

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191746012
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	895,931