With development on Big Little Lies season 3 underway, new plot details have been revealed by Liane Moriarty.

The bestselling author of the 2014 novel Big Little Lies, from which the HBO series was adapted, is releasing a sequel called Big Little Truths on August 25, 2026.

Moriarty just teased what fans can expect from the book and revealed that the novel will serve as the basis for Big Little Lies season 3.

During an interview with USA Today, she admitted that a time jump in the story will have occurred by the time Big Little Truths begins, which means the kids who were in elementary school before will be in their teens.

When Big Little Lies became a hit series, Moriarty was “never interested right away” in writing a sequel.

So when she did come up with an idea for the novel, she realized that jumping forward in time was the right way to go since her characters had already been put through “so much and it just didn’t make sense to me to write something that followed on directly. A time jump always made sense to me.”

“Right from the beginning, because of the show, there was talk about writing a sequel, but I was never interested right away because you put your characters through so much and it just didn’t make sense to me to write something that followed on directly. A time jump always made sense to me.”

Exploring the kids’ lives as teenagers ended up being Moriarty’s favorite part of writing the upcoming sequel. She was able to rely on her real-life children for inspiration, which only happened because she waited several years to write Big Little Truths and was then able to see the “wealth of new material” she could mine from.

“I had to wait for my children to become teenagers, and then they did. And there was a wealth of new material there.”

The younger characters play a large role in Big Little Truths. According to the official synopsis for the novel, a strange man starts lurking around the nearby school and asking what appear to be innocent questions. But the parents realize they have to face the repercussions of the secrets they’ve been hiding from their kids.

Moriarty revealed to USA Today that the students are forced to sit for interviews after a severed finger gets mailed to their principal’s office. “The first thing that happens is they say, ‘Well, it all began at Madeline’s 50th birthday,’” which kicks off the central mystery of the entire novel.

“Their principal’s office receives a severed finger in the mail. In the first book, the parents at the school, they provide the Greek chorus explaining the action and what happened. In this book, the teenagers − the kids − are the Greek chorus. So they’re being interviewed about what happened. So the first thing that happens is they say, ‘Well, it all began at Madeline’s 50th birthday.’”

The TV show’s version of Renata left a lasting impression on the author as she wrote Big Little Truths.

“It’s all Laura Dern’s fault because she was so amazing as Renata,” explained Moriarty. “It was impossible for me to not give her a bigger role also in this book.” As various characters are at crossroads in their lives, Big Little Truths will show Renata “living her best life.“

“It’s all Laura Dern’s fault because she was so amazing as Renata, it was impossible for me to not give her a bigger role also in this book. You couldn’t put Renata in a corner.”

Three years after Moriarty published Big Little Lies, HBO premiered its small-screen adaptation of the novel with an all-star cast that included Dern, Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Zoë Kravitz, Alexander Skarsgård and Adam Scott. Meryl Streep joined the cast in season 2.

With an average score of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, Big Little Lies has been a critically acclaimed series for HBO and has won several awards across its first two seasons, including Best Miniseries or Television Film, Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film (Kidman) and Best Supporting Actress – TV (Dern) at the Golden Globes, and Outstanding Limited Series at the Emmys.

It’s been almost seven years since the series was last on the air, and the cast and crew have talked a lot over the years about reuniting for another installment.

Back in September 2025, HBO finally announced it was developing Big Little Lies season 3. Now Moriarty has confirmed that the new storyline will be based on her upcoming novel, Big Little Truths.