The Engagement

A gripping, provocative new novel from Women's Prize Shortlisted author Chloe Hooper. For fans of Maggie O'farrell and How To Be A Good Wife by Emma Chapman.

A complex psychological thriller that draws on the rich literary history of madwomen in the attic, from Jane Eyre and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca... The Engagement is not Fifty Shades of Grey; its kicks, and kicks in the teeth, are much more subtle.

The pages fly past so quickly you almost miss the  sharp turn of phrase and imagery … Chloe Hooper’s novel engages us, like  Liese in Colquhoun’s fantasy, in an S&amp;M web for which we don’t know the safe word.

The novel has an affecting oddness all its own... I hope that some of E L James' seemingly insatiable fans chance upon The Engagement and find there is more satisfaction in its pages than in Christian Grey’s whipping room.

The Engagement is Chloe Hooper’s second novel and comes almost a decade after her well-received debut, A Child’s Book of True Crime. It is a much tighter, more suspenseful work… The Engagement is compelling.

Hooper ably sustains the tension, carefully deploying surprises. The isolation of the farm and the “creeping shocks” of the wilderness create a potent unease.

Chloe Hooper’s writing is singularly challenging and confrontational... For those who prefer their erotic literature less Fifty Shades of Grey and more Jane Eyre.

Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Brontë, Alfred Hitchcock, you hear them approving, a cackling cacophony to counterpoint Liese’s voices, so beautifully spun by Chloe Hooper it all sounds seamless. Polished gothic.

Engagement reminds us too of the power of fiction, both within the story and outside it. Liese feels threatened by the stories she herself has told, and we in turn flip the pages breathlessly, suspending disbelief.

In terms of myth, it is rather like Bluebeard’s castle...in film terms, it recalls Psycho.

A gothic tale, filled with brilliantly creepy details.

If Fifty Shades is your thing, you might just love The Engagement.

Hooper serves up a chilling story of obsession, delusion, and the slippery nature of sexual identity.

There’s more than a shade of Fifty Shades in this erotic, psychological thriller...the unreliability of the narrator will have you guessing till the end of this dark and thought provoking tale.

This is a tense, elegant, psychological thriller about an emotional tug-of-war... This tale of self-willing entrapment keeps us guessing to the end... Compelling and memorable.

Hooper has constructed a modern fairy tale of a kind, complete with Bluebeard and his castle, and using some of the fictional paraphernalia of Gothic horror and melodrama she delivers a compelling, at times disturbing, but always humorous and readable cautionary tale.

The difficulty with a thriller - even if it is literary - is not to fall into cliche and predictability. At the points where it seems as this may happen, Hooper wrong foots the reader without losing any credibility, leading to a very clever ending.

This beautifully crafted psychological thriller really got under my skin.

Hooper is a very clever writer. Her prose is uncluttered, but every phrase is packed with meaning.

New, dark literary thriller...read it for its seductive plot.

A dark unsettling read which will appeal to fans of the gothic as well as those who enjoy tales of twisted relationships such as Gone Girl.

Literary thriller The Engagement by Chloe Hooper takes a Fifty-shades style plot about erotic games between estate agent Liesel and business man Alexander to a darker place.

Part gothic novel, part thriller, this will keep you guessing until the end.

Hooper has crafted a terrific tale full of dark corners and dead-ends that leave the reader wondering what to believe. The result is a collision between a psychological thriller and a very dark romance that has something for fans of either genre.

The Engagement has all the ingredients of a top psychological thriller with the bonus of literary style. I think it could be a huge hit. I hope so. I really want to see the film…

Beautifully crafted and sleek psychological thriller… The Engagement, by one of Australia’s newest and brightest writers, explores mind control, power games and emotional abuse, so do not expect it to be a romance novel as it is, most definitely, not!

An unsettling thriller... A book which deftly explores the power of money and property, romance and sex

Plain and lucid, with beautifully accurate word-choice, and plenty of grace-notes that one pauses to appreciate... A highly intelligent, unpredictable, very grown-up, and crazily readable novel

A sleek and sly two-hander, a thriller almost, that sets everything out clearly for the reader and yet remains filled with uncertainty

An intense psychological thriller, strewn with enough red herrings to satisfy the most demanding reader

Hooper's writing is singularly challenging and confrontational... For those who prefer their erotic literature less Fifty Shades of Grey, more Jane Eyre

A fine, literary thriller; cold, at times almost nauseatingly disturbing

A fascinating, subtle, really original modern Gothic thriller

Chloe Hooper was born in 1973. Her highly praised first novel, A Child's Book of True Crime (2002), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her Observer article about the Doomadgee case, 'Island of Lost Souls', was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Awards. Her last book, The Tall Man, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. In Australia, it won seven major literary awards.

TWO PEOPLE. HOW MANY LIES? 
 
A WOMAN AND A MAN DRIVE AT DUSK TO A RURAL MANSION FOR A FINAL WEEKEND 
TOGETHER. 
 
IT'S ALL BEEN A GAME. BOTH PLAYERS UNDERSTOOD THE RULES. OR SO THE WOMAN 
THINKS. 
 
AT THE HOUSE, A NEW GAME BEGINS. A TRAP HAS BEEN SET. BUT HOW AND WHY? AND FOR WHOM?

Death and Life on Palm Island

The Tall Man

'A powerful non-fiction novel in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood' - Sunday Telegraph

Chloe Hooper's masterful book of reportage is a kind of moral thriller about power, wretchedness and violence

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this book

Hooper fills in the background with a light touch.... She instinctively grasps the most telling detail... This is a brilliant vignette in which one appalling incident illuminates a saga of social breakdown

Queensland's police force - along with its tourist board - won't thank Hooper for The Tall Man, but the rest of us should. This meticulous, compelling portrayal of the dark side of Australian life deserves the widest possible audience

Has already drawn comparisons with some of the best of that often derided genre, true crime, and it fully deserves the attention...this gracefully nuanced book is as much about the world in which a death takes place as the nature of death itself

This compelling portrait of the dark side of life down under deserves to be widely read

So sharply self-aware, laser-precise in its observation, so brutal, and still so tender. It's a masterpiece: true crime writing where Hooper takes no prisoners

Chloe Hooper was born in 1973. Her highly praised first novel, A Child's Book of True Crime (2002), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her Observer article about the Doomadgee case, 'Island of Lost Souls', was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Awards. She is also the author of The Engagement and The Tall Man, which won seven major literary awards in Australia.

When Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old member of the Aboriginal community of Palm Island, was arrested for swearing at a white police officer, he was dead within forty-five minutes of being locked up. The police claimed he'd tripped on a step, but the pathologist likened his injuries to those received in a plane crash. The main suspect was the handsome, charismatic Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, an experienced cop with decorations for his work. 
 
In following Hurley's trail to some of the wildest and most remote parts of Australia, Chloe Hooper explores Aboriginal myths and history and uncovers buried secrets of white mischief. Atmospheric, gritty and original, The Tall Man takes readers to the heart of a struggle for power, revenge and justice.

Chloe Hooper

It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper's first novel... Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut

A finely calibrated meditation on a young woman's awakening to her sexual powers and to the violent undercurrents of Australian history

Intriguing and resonant... Hooper succeeds where far more seasoned writers often fall short... she forces open her material and she does this with a curiosity and an instinctive grace

This book will win prizes.  It will be made into a film.  But most importantly it will enthral millions of people worldwide.  A true classic

Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted pupil, Lucien. Unnervingly, her lover's wife has just published Murder at Black Swan Point, a true crime novel about the brutal slaying of a young adulteress. Suspecting the adult account of Black Swan Point's murder to be wrong, Kate imagines her own version of the novel, for children, narrated by Australian animals. But has her obsession with the crime aligned her fate with that of the murdered adulteress? 
 
Compelled by the lives of her nine-year-old students, Kate is a misfit among their parents. And though, in scenes of escalating eroticism, Lucien's father brings her to life sexually, he does nothing to penetrate her obsession with the past. Kate is fixated on the crime of passion that occurred years earlier, less and less aware of her own reputation in the present.

Chloe Hooper

Praise for A Child's Book of True Crime

Utterly beguiling

It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper's first novel... Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut

A finely calibrated meditation on a young woman's awakening to her sexual powers and to the violent undercurrents of Australian history

Utterly beguiling

It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper's first novel... Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut

A finely calibrated meditation on a young woman's awakening to her sexual powers and to the violent undercurrents of Australian history

Utterly beguiling

It is difficult to believe that this clever, creepy tale is Chloe Hooper's first novel... Its originality and ambition make it a deeply impressive debut

A finely calibrated meditation on a young woman's awakening to her sexual powers and to the violent undercurrents of Australian history

Books by Chloe Hooper

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