BooksTable for Two: Fictions
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood.
The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.
In Towles’s novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.
Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.
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3 books in catalog
Historical and character-driven fiction examining mid-twentieth-century society, refined social settings, and personal resilience forms the center of a widely read body of work. Amor Towles became a prominent voice in contemporary fiction through novels that balance intricate plotting with keen observations of etiquette, status, and morality. His narrative catalog includes widely recognized titles such as A Gentleman in Moscow and expansive American journeys that capture distinct historical moments.
Born and raised in the Boston area, Towles graduated from Yale University before earning a Master of Arts in English from Stanford University. His graduate thesis, a short story cycle titled 'The Temptations of Pleasure,' was published in the Paris Review in 1989. Prior to committing full time to fiction writing, he worked as an investment professional on Wall Street for over twenty years. Towles made his novelistic debut with Rules of Civility in 2011, which became a New York Times bestseller, received the Prix Fitzgerald in France in 2012, and was optioned for film adaptation. Following this success, he devoted himself entirely to literature, publishing A Gentleman in Moscow in 2016 and his third novel, The Lincoln Highway, in 2021. Today, he resides in Manhattan with his family, where he continues writing novels and shorter fiction.
Towles's narrative technique relies on meticulously structured plots, precise prose, and an understated wit that illuminates the social codes of specific historical eras. His books frequently examine themes of personal integrity, unexpected confinement, class boundaries, and the accidental trajectories that redirect individual lives. Whether detailing high society in 1930s Manhattan, a hotel imprisonment in Soviet Moscow, or a ten-day cross-country journey across 1950s America, his writing combines historical specificity with an emphasis on personal choices, moral decency, and human connection.
Rules of Civility
