The Engagement

Liese Campbell has an engagement for the weekend: to stay with Alexander Colquhoun at his country seat in remote Australia. Liese is English. She’s been working at her uncle’s estate agency in Melbourne to pay off her debts. Wealthy Alexander has been looking for a place in the city. The luxury apartments Liese shows her new client become sets for a relationship that satisfies their fantasies – and Liese’s financial problems. It’s a game: both players understand the rules. Or so Liese thinks.

Across the ancient landscape they drive at dusk. When she sees the grand decaying mansion ‘carved from grey black volcanic rock’ and senses a change in Alexander, Liese realises a new game has begun.

Chloe Hooper has created an irresistible psychological thriller for the modern age. The Engagement lays bare the power relationships latent in love, money, property and sex. It turns our expectations upside down and our sympathies inside out. Exactly who is pursuing whom in this entanglement? Which of them is sane and which a pathological liar?

Long anticipated and unforgettable, The Engagement is the stunning next step in the career of one of Australia’s most talented writers.