Amor Towles Releases New Book

I received a note that classmate Amor Towles will be publishing his debut novel, Rules of Civility, on July 25.  

Here is the write up on Amor's new book:

RULES OF CIVILITY (July 25, 2011; ISBN: 978-0-670-02269-4) is an elegant and enchanting debut novel set in New York City in 1938 by Amor Towles. Readers will quickly fall under the spell of this beguiling novel with its crisp writing, its glittering atmosphere, and its uncommonly appealing heroine.

RULES OF CIVILITY tells the story of a watershed year in the life of Katya “Katey” Kontent, a young, sharp, urbane woman of extraordinary ability and humble origins. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and a large dose of moxie, Katey embarks on a yearlong journey through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a future far brighter than she has been told she has the right to expect.

RULES OF CIVILITY opens on the last night of 1937 in a jazz bar in Manhattan, where Katey, a secretary at a Wall Street law firm, and her glamorous boardinghouse roommate Eve meet a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a friendly but world-weary smile named Tinker Gray. “Dibs,” says Eve, as both women become instantly enamored. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course.

By summertime of 1938, Katey’s social orbit has expanded and she becomes acquainted with a shy and principled businessman named Wallace Wofford, the elegant and wealthy Anne Grandin, and a pack of energetic, soiree-hopping trust funders led by the irrepressible Dicky Vanderwhile. With her new credentials in-hand as an assistant to a Conde Nast publisher and her ever-increasing social stature, Katey experiences first-hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface.

RULES OF CIVILITY is at once an elegant fairy tale and a classic coming-of-age-story that details how a few chance encounters and spur of the moment decisions when one is young can define the rest of one’s life.

Amor Towles, 46, was born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University and received an MA in English from Stanford University, where he was a Scowcroft Fellow. He is a principal at an investment firm in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

PRAISE FOR RULES OF CIVILITY

“[A] smashing debut… remarkable for its strong narrative, original characters and a voice influenced by Fitzgerald and Capote, but clearly true to itself.”

—Publishers Weekly starred review

“Historical love story. Snappy dialog and sophisticated characters. A romantic look at the difficulties of being a New Yorker.”

—Library Journal