Rules of Civility follows Katey Kontent through a transformative year in 1938 New York City, where a chance encounter on New Year's Eve propels her from a modest life in a Greenwich Village boarding house into Manhattan's upper echelons. Amor Towles, who would later write A Gentleman in Moscow, creates a sophisticated portrait of pre-war New York through a narrator whose wit and self-awareness give the novel its distinctive voice. Katey, a working-class girl with an instinct for literature and an education from the city's streets and libraries, navigates relationships with Tinker Grey, a wealthy banker with secrets, and Eve Ross, her beautiful and calculating former roommate. The novel takes its title from George Washington's youthful copybook exercise in proper behavior, and questions of conduct—who follows rules, who breaks them, and at what cost—pervade the story. Towles captures the texture of his period setting: jazz clubs, Fifth Avenue apartments, fishing shacks on Long Island. But beneath the glamour lies a serious exploration of class mobility, the prices paid for ambition, and the compromises that shape adult life. For readers who enjoy elegant prose and well-constructed social fiction, Rules of Civility delivers style and substance in equal measure.