The Engagement

From Chloe Hooper, author of the phenomenal The Tall Man, comes a brilliant novel about sex and money. The Engagement is a taut psychological thriller in which the deft blurring of reality and dark fantasy rivals that of Luis Bunuel's classic Belle de Jour.Liese Campbell has an engagement for the weekend: to stay with Alexander Colquhoun, the well-mannered heir of a pastoral dynasty, at his property in western Victoria. Liese, an English architect in flight from the financial crisis, now works at her uncle's real-estate business in Melbourne. Alexander has been looking for a place in the city. The luxury apartments Liese shows him have become sets for a relationship that satisfies their fantasies – and helps pay her debts. It's a game. Both players understand the rules. Or so she thinks.Across the ancient landscape they drive at dusk to his grand decaying mansion. Here Liese senses a change in Alexander, and realises a different game has begun.This gripping, provocative novel by one of Australia's finest writers is a psychological thriller for the modern age, one which explores the snares of money and love, and the dark side of erotic imagination. A trap has been set, but how and why? And for whom?

Chloe Hooper was born in Melbourne in 1973.She was educated at the University of Melbourne and as a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York. Her first novel, "A Child s Book of True Crime, " was a "New York Times" Notable Book and short-listed for the Orange Prize.She lives inAustralia.