Fair Warning: A Novel

The Story

Fair Warning is acclaimed novelist Robert Olen Butler's enthralling glimpse into a Manhattan auction house that caters to the shopping pheromones of the rich and powerful. At age forty, the company's charismatic star employee, Amy Dickerson, is capable of selling a Renoir painting of a pudgy nude for twice its value. Her customers are intoxicated by the objects they covet. And sometimes, such as when the dark and mysterious Trevor locks eyes with Amy as she closes an auction with 'fair warning,' that object is Amy herself. Selected as a Book Sense 76 title and as a New York Times Summer Reading title, '[Fair Warning] is as frank and sassy as its heroine.' -- Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe 'Engaging ... fascinating ... accompanied by the wealth of evocative detail one might expect from a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.' -- Les Standiford, The Miami Herald 'Once again, [Butler's] language is right on the money in this alternately witty and moving meditation on value and values.' -- Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor 'Butler has created one of the more fascinating female protagonists in recent history.' -- Kirkus Reviews 'Fair Warning deserves our praise, but its author also deserves our gratitude, for his continued risk-taking and stubbornly singular sensibility.' -- Todd Kliman, The Washington Post