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Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

Contemporary fiction

Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

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Quick take

The latest from the author of Nine Perfect Strangers follows a wealthy family whose matriarch goes missing.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Buzzy

    Buzzy

  • Illustrated icon, Marriage_Issues

    Marriage issues

Synopsis

The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other . . .

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father?

This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children—Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke—were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups and there is the wonderful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent, two are not so sure—but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their biggest match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.

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Get an early look from the first pages of Apples Never Fall.

Apples Never Fall

Prologue

The bike lay on the side of the road beneath a gray oak, the handle-bars at an odd, jutted angle, as if it had been thrown with angry force.

It was early on a Saturday morning, the fifth day of a heatwave. More than forty bushfires continued to blaze doggedly across the state. Six regional towns had “evacuate now” warnings in place, but here in suburban Sydney the only danger was to asthma sufferers, who were advised to stay indoors. The smoke haze that draped the city was a malicious yellow-gray, as thick as a London fog.

The empty streets were silent apart from the subterranean roar of cicadas. People slept after restless, hot nights of jangled dreams, while early risers yawned and thumb-scrolled their phone screens.

The discarded bike was shiny-new, advertised as a “vintage lady’s bike”: mint green, seven-speed, with a tan leather saddle and a white wicker basket. The sort of bike you were meant to imagine riding in the cool, crisp air of a European mountain village, wearing a soft beret rather than a safety helmet, a baguette tucked under one arm.

Four green apples lay scattered on the dry grass beneath the tree as if they had spilled and rolled from the bike’s basket.

A family of black blowflies sat poised at different points on the bike’s silver spokes, so still they looked dead.

The car, a Holden Commodore V8, vibrated with the beat of eighties rock as it approached from the intersection, inappropriately fast in this family neighborhood.

The brake lights flashed, and the car reversed with a squeal of tires until it was parked next to the bike. The music stopped. The driver emerged, smoking a cigarette. He was skinny, barefoot, and bare-chested, wearing nothing but blue football shorts. He left the driver’s door open and tiptoed with balletic, practiced grace across the already hot asphalt and onto the grass, where he hunkered down to study the bike. He caressed the bike’s punctured front tire as if it were the limb of a wounded animal. The flies buzzed, suddenly alive and worried.

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Why I love it

If you’ve spent any time with the sneaky mothers of Big Little Lies, or the wellness retreaters of Nine Perfect Strangers, or any of the other characters that populate Liane Moriarty’s novels, then you know by now that Moriarty has a knack for writing about complicated, flawed people in ways that are oh-so-fun to read. And in Apples Never Fall she’s done it again with the Delaneys: an outwardly successful family whose dirty laundry comes tumbling out when one of their own goes missing.

Stan and Joy Delaney have retired from their days running a prestigious tennis academy and are looking forward to their years as empty nesters. From the outside, their marriage seems solid. But when Joy abruptly goes missing, the police, the community, and even the Delaneys’ own children start to wonder if things weren’t as happy as they seemed. Is it possible that Stan could have harmed his wife? And what ever happened to that mysterious stranger that showed up bleeding at the Delaneys’ door all those months ago?

In true Moriarty fashion, as the novel unfolds, the pieces of the puzzle fall expertly into place. But what really kept me turning pages is the way Moriarty can turn mundane, often frustrating experiences in life—family feuds, long-held resentments, misunderstandings—into moments of warmth, humor, and compassion. Part mystery, part family drama, this book is a reminder that although things often don’t go the way we’ve planned, we’re not alone in trying to figure out the best way to live this thing we call life.

Other books by Liane Moriarty

Member ratings (13,260)

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Past Perfect Life
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& Sons
Family drama
View all
The Last One at the Wedding
The Night We Lost Him
Madwoman
Hum
Family Happiness
Husbands & Lovers
Same As It Ever Was
Jackpot Summer
The Lion Women of Tehran
Did I Ever Tell You?
Real Americans
The Reappearance of Rachel Price
Just for the Summer
All We Were Promised
Hard by a Great Forest
Family Family
Northwoods
Mercury
The Second Chance Year
A Winter in New York
Check & Mate
What We Kept to Ourselves
The Leftover Woman
While You Were Out
Evil Eye
Just Another Missing Person
Family Lore
Little Monsters
The Connellys of County Down
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Paper Names
Divine Rivals
Hang the Moon
The Last Russian Doll
Maame
White Horse
The Family Game
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
You're Invited
Marrying the Ketchups
Part of Your World
The Good Left Undone
The Verifiers
The Unsinkable Greta James
Don't Cry for Me
Black Cake
Olga Dies Dreaming
The Family
The Book of Magic
Sankofa
Everything We Didn't Say
Apples Never Fall
The Sweetest Remedy
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
We Are the Brennans
Skye Falling
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
What's Mine and Yours
The Bad Muslim Discount
The Push
The Chicken Sisters
In a Holidaze
White Ivy
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
Practical Magic
Head Over Heels
The Vanishing Half
All Adults Here
The Kingdom of Back
I Have No Secrets
Saving Zoë
Color Me In
Past Perfect Life
Things You Save in a Fire
There's Something About Sweetie
All That You Leave Behind
The Other Woman
Small Fry
The Winter Sister
The Rules of Magic
& Sons