Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan art auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success. Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene. Desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation. As these narratives converge, with disastrous consequences, A Nearly Perfect Copy boldly challenges our presumptions about originality and authenticity, loss and replacement, and the perilous pursuit of perfection.

A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Amend, Allison

United States

Anchor

Richly drawn and sharply observed, A Nearly Perfect Copy is a smart and affecting novel of family and forgery set amidst the rarefied international art world. Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success. Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene, and, desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation. As these narratives converge, with disastrous consequences, A Nearly Perfect Copy boldly challenges our presumptions about originality and authenticity, loss and replacement, and the perilous pursuit of perfection.

Nan A. Talese

Inspired by the midcentury memoirs of Frances Conway, Enchanted Islands is the dazzling story of an independent American woman whose path takes her far from her native Minnesota when she and her husband, an undercover intelligence officer, are sent to the Galápagos Islands at the brink of World War II. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1882 to immigrant parents, Frances Frankowski covets the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel, who has everything Fanny could wish for—money, parents who value education, and an effervescent and winning personality. When, at age fifteen, Rosalie decides they should run away to Chicago, Fanny jumps at the chance to escape her unexceptional life. But, within a year, Rosalie commits an unforgivable betrayal, inciting Frances to strike out on her own. Decades later, the women reconnect in San Francisco and realize how widely their lives have diverged. While Rosalie is a housewife and mother, Frances works as a secretary for the Office of Naval Intelligence. There she is introduced to Ainslie Conway, an intelligence operator ten years her junior. When it’s arranged for Frances and Ainslie to marry and carry out a mission on the Galápagos Islands, the couple’s identities—already hidden from each other—are further buried under their new cover stories. No longer a lonely spinster, Frances is about to begin the most fascinating and intrigue-filled years of her life. Amid active volcanoes, forbidding wildlife and flora, and unfriendly neighbors, Ainslie and Frances carve out a life for themselves. But the secrets they harbor from their enemies and from each other may be their undoing. Drawing on the rich history of the early twentieth century and set against a large, colorful canvas, Enchanted Islands boldly examines the complexity of female friendship, the universal pursuit of a place to call home, and the reverberations of secrets we keep from others and from ourselves.

Enchanted Islands: A Novel

Born to immigrant parents in Minnesota just before the turn of the century, Frances Frankowski grew up coveting the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel. And yet, decades later, when the women reconnect in San Francisco, their lives have diverged. Rosalie is a housewife and mother, while Frances works for the Office of Naval Intelligence and has just been given a top-secret assignment: marry handsome spy Ainslie Conway and move to the Galápagos Islands to investigate the Germans living there in the build-up to World War II. Amid active volcanoes, forbidding wildlife and flora, and unfriendly neighbors, Ainslie and Frances carve out a life for themselves. But the secrets they harbor—from their friends, from their enemies, and even from each other—may be their undoing.

Enchanted Islands

Oklahoma is a forgotten territory of "Indians, outlaws, and immigrants" when its first Jewish settler, Boggy Haurowitz, arrives in 1859. Full of expectations, he finds the untamed region a formidable foe, its landscape rugged, its resources strained. In Stations West, four generations of Haurowitzes, intertwined with a family of Swedish immigrants, struggle against the Territory's "insatiable appetite." The challenges of creating a home amid betrayals, nature's vagaries, and burgeoning statehood prove too great. Each generation in turn succumbs to the overwhelming lure of the transcontinental railroad, and each returns home to find the landscape of their youth, like themselves, changed beyond recognition, their family utterly transformed. Dramatic and lyrical, Allison Amend's first novel, steeped in the history and lore of the Oklahoma Territory, tells an unforgettable multigenerational -- and very American -- story of Jewish pioneers, their adopted family, and the challenges they face. Amid the founding of the West, Stations West's generations struggle to forge and maintain their identities as Jews, as immigrants, and as Americans.

Stations West: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction)

Genre Fiction

LSU Press

“Allison Amend is a gifted storyteller, whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising.”—Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs: a Novel
Allison Amend’s writing is both thoughtful and entertaining, with a strong sense of humor throughout.
Allison Amend was born in Chicago, Illinois, on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2–0. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While there, she learned never to live downwind from a pig farm and how to put English on a cue ball. She lives in New York, writing and teaching fiction.

Things That Pass for Love

OV Books

Compelled by a tragic loss into a crisis that jeopardizes her family and elite career, Elmira converges with talented artist Gabriel, who embarks on a desperate scheme to advance himself in Parisian cultural circles. (general fiction).

A Nearly Perfect Copy

Thorndike Press

Authors such as Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee, Ha Jin, Amy Tan, and Maxine Hong Kingston are among the established authors and newly emerging voices profiled in Asian-American Writers. This new volume also discusses their acclaimed works to assist students studying these authors and their writings.

Asian-American Writers (Multicultural Voices)

Teen & Young Adult

Chelsea House Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amend, Allison. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Amend, Allison

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amend, Allison. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel

A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel

Enchanted Islands: A Novel

Enchanted Islands

Stations West: A Novel (Yellow Shoe Fiction)

Things That Pass for Love

A Nearly Perfect Copy

Asian-American Writers (Multicultural Voices)