Rules Of Civility by Amor Towles is the unforgettable debut by the million-copy bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln HighwayIn a New York City jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew: * how to sneak into the cinema, and steal silk stockings from Bendel's * how to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year * that if you can still lose yourself in a Dickens novel then everything is going to be fine By the end of the year she'll have learned: * how to live like a redhead and insist upon the very best * that chance encounters can be fated, and the word 'yes' can be a poison * that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat . . . 'If the unthinkable happened and I could never read another new work of fiction . . .

I'd simply re-read this sparkling, stylish book, with yet another round of martinis as dry as the author's wit' Herald'Terrific. A smart, witty, charming dry-martini of a novel' David Nicholls, author of One Day'Achingly stylish . . . A witty, slick production, replete with dark intrigue, period details, and a suitably Katharine Hepburn-like heroine' Guardian'A love letter to the city and the era . . . Towles creates a narrative that sparkles with sentences so beautiful you'll stop and re-read them' Stylist