The elderly woman on the crowded flight from Hobart to Sydney, Australia, is unremarkable in every way. She is well dressed but not overly so, has gray hair, and wears some kind of brooch on her sweater. The most notable thing about her is that there’s an empty seat in her row, the first one behind business class. That is, until she gets up 45 minutes from the end of the flight and begins to methodically inform the other passengers, one by one, how and when they will die.

Ethan, a 29-year-old with his arm in a cast, is already thinking about death, having just come from the funeral of his somewhat annoying friend, Harvey. “I expect assault,” the woman tells him. “Age 30.” Paula, a harried mother of two, is flummoxed to learn that her baby, Timmy, is predicted to drown at age seven. Eve and Dom, flying to Sydney for their honeymoon and still wearing their wedding clothes, get a dreadful shock. “I expect intimate partner violence,” says the woman. “Age 25.” Leo, the stressed, overworked man across the aisle from the woman, gets a prediction of death at 43 from a workplace accident.

"Here’s my prediction for you, dear reader: I expect chuckling. I expect entertainment. I expect tears. Liane Moriarty is a master storyteller, and she has done it again."

Many of the more fortunate passengers receive more palatable news: death at 83 from cancer, old age at 94. As soon as the woman is reseated and offered water by flight attendant Allegra (“self harm,” age 28), she falls into a deep sleep.

As a reader of HERE ONE MOMENT, you’ll be wondering how on earth Liane Moriarty can possibly resolve this premise. Will the predictions come true? How will they affect the characters we are already coming to know on the plane? But by then you're hooked. I can’t think of an author more adept at quickly (and cleverly) sketching a character, and it’s a good thing because there are so many characters in this novel. “Now the lady is in the aisle next to Ethan. She is small. She seems harmless. In a hurry. She reminds Ethan of his grandmother when she learns she is required to download an app.”

In short chapters, we follow five people who have received death sentences in the near future as they grapple with whether or not they can or should believe them. When teenage passenger Kayla dies (as predicted) in an auto accident shortly after the flight, questions intensify. Should Leo quit his job, which his wife urges him to do? Should Eve consent to let sleepwalking Dom handcuff himself to the bed so he won’t harm her in his sleep? Is Ethan’s roommate’s possessive, macho new boyfriend capable of assault?

Perhaps the best thing in this nearly 500-page novel is getting to know Cherry Lockwood, the mysterious woman who made the predictions. She alone tells her story in the first person, and her voice is exacting, quirky, unsparing and honest. “Sometimes, when I’m nervous, I become overly, even inappropriately, chatty. I veer off topic. I say whatever comes to mind. I become too literal, I try too hard to be accurate when no one cares as much as me about accuracy, and I can see by people’s faces that I am being ‘odd,’ and I am forced to pinch the skin on my wrist to make myself stop talking.” While overall the book is lighthearted, death and loss receive their due.

Here’s my prediction for you, dear reader: I expect chuckling. I expect entertainment. I expect tears. Liane Moriarty is a master storyteller, and she has done it again.