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Rules of Civility
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
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Editorial reviews
Amor Towles is approaching 50 and making a living as a principal at an investment firm. One wouldn’t expect his debut novel to be told from the perspective of a wise-cracking young lady of 25, but Towles is good at surprises. Katherine Kontent (“like the state of being”) is a legal secretary trying to climb the social ladder and squeeze all the juice out of Manhattan. She is the only slightly less seductive sidekick to Eve, who leaves her wealthy family behind to act like a mash-up of Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles and Truman Capote's Holly Golightly. It's the Upper East Side in the winter of 1939 — ripe for ripping off F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway or whatever writer you prefer from the era of roaring alcoholism, but Amor Towles doesn’t take the bait.
Neither does narrator Rebecca Lowman, who has good fun with the zippy dinner conversations while managing to keep Kate's sporting sense of dignity intact as both lovers and day jobs threaten to collapse her up-and-comingness. Lowman, who has a long string of television series bit parts from Will & Grace to Law & Order to her credit, slips easily into the everywoman role and adds notes of believable determination to our heroine's struggle for better circumstances. Who will marry Tinker Grey and who will get the promotion at Conde Nast are interesting plots, but none of this is the surprise - the plot surprise is all the more devastating. Towles gives us some glitter, but he doesn't gloss, and that is the biggest surprise. The women in this book are fraught with the tremendous burden of appearing charming but unintelligent, and Lowman lets in enough sharp tones to give their dilemmas and revelations a substantial bite. Towles has fleshed out these familiar archetypes in a unique direction, so much more rich and thick than the flat characters with which novels of this time period are usually laden. Megan Volpert
Publisher's summary
From the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, a “sharply stylish” (Boston Globe) book about a young woman in post-Depression era New York who suddenly finds herself thrust into high society - now with over one million readers worldwide.
On the last night of 1937, 25-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society - where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.
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By: Amor Towles
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The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023
- By: Amor Towles - editor, Otto Penzler - editor
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright, Christina Delaine, Terrence Kidd
- Length: 21 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffrey Deaver, and T. C. Boyle. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, New York Times bestseller Amor Towles has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
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Not For Me
- By 3POnR2 on 03-12-24
By: Amor Towles - editor, and others
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Normas de cortesía [Rules of Civility]
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Sara Gómez Alonso
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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En la Nochevieja de 1937, Katey Kontent, mecanógrafa en un bufete de abogados de Wall Street, y Eve Ross, su compañera de pensión, salen dispuestas a exprimir a fondo la libertad que promete Nueva York. Se dirigen a The Hotspot. Aparece en escena Theodore Tinker Gray, un joven cachorro de la aristocracia de Nueva Inglaterra, luciendo una sonrisa arrebatadora y un abrigo que Katey y Eve no podrían pagar con sus sueldos de un año. Juntos acabarán celebrando la llegada del año nuevo en Times Square, en una noche que marcará el principio de una amistad que transformará sus vidas.
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Que historia!!
- By Un viaje por la historia teológica De la Iglesia católica on 07-06-24
By: Amor Towles
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Lincoln Highway (German edition)
- By: Amor Towles, Susanne Höbel - Übersetzer
- Narrated by: Uve Teschner, Julian Greis, Lisa Hrdina
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Im Juni 1954 wird der achtzehnjährige Emmett aus dem Gefängnis entlassen. Zu Hause in Nebraska wartet sein kleiner Bruder Billy auf ihn. Nach dem Tod des Vaters möchten sie einen Neuanfang in Kalifornien wagen, wo sie ihre verschwundene Mutter vermuten. Alles ist bereit für die Fahrt mit dem gelben 48 Studebaker, doch plötzlich tauchen zwei Freunde aus dem Gefängnis auf. Sie haben allerdings ein anderes Ziel, New York City.
By: Amor Towles, and others
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The Dining Car
- By: Eric Peterson
- Narrated by: Graham Hamilton
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Fresh from a public humiliation and in search of his true calling, former college football star Jack Marshall enlists as bartender and steward aboard Horace Button's vintage private railroad car, the "Pioneer Mother", which is transporting the legendary food writer and social critic across the country in opulent style. While striving to appease the eccentric, finicky Horace and Wanda, the Pioneer Mother's enigmatic chef, Jack falls under the spell of Giselle Lebeau, a gorgeous celebrity chef.
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Trains Food Libations
- By Stacey Von Berg on 03-26-21
By: Eric Peterson
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Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
- By: George Washington
- Narrated by: Jason McCoy
- Length: 36 mins
- Unabridged
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"Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation" presents a compilation of guidelines and principles on etiquette and manners that were handwritten by George Washington. This collection offers a fascinating insight into the social norms and expectations of the 18th century.
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Thalia Book Club: Amor Towles "A Gentleman in Moscow"
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Liesl Schillinger, Boyd Gaines
- Length: 1 hr and 33 mins
- Original Recording
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Brimming with humor and wit, an unforgettable cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, A Gentleman in Moscow casts a spell as it relates the count's endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Amor Towles joins us for an evening of conversation with Liesl Schillinger on this thrilling new work. With a reading by Tony Award-winning actor Boyd Gaines.
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poor audio
- By toppadiddypop on 01-10-18
By: Amor Towles
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Beautiful Ruins
- By: Jess Walter
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot - searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
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My mind wandered
- By Ella on 11-25-12
By: Jess Walter
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Rare Objects
- A Novel
- By: Kathleen Tessaro
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Maeve Fanning is a first-generation Irish immigrant born and raised among the poor, industrious Italian families of Boston's North End by her widowed mother. Clever, capable, and as headstrong as her red hair suggests, she's determined to better herself despite the overwhelming hardships of the Great Depression. However, Maeve also has a dangerous fondness for strange men and bootleg gin - a rebellious appetite that soon finds her spiraling downward, leading a double life.
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I loved this book!!
- By Traci J on 08-19-17
By: Kathleen Tessaro
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The Forgetting Time
- A Novel
- By: Sharon Guskin
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Noah wants to go home. A seemingly easy request from most four-year-olds. But as Noah's single mother, Janie, knows, nothing with Noah is ever easy. One day the preschool office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about Noah, and no, not later, now - and life as she knows it stops. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life.
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I'd Like to Forget This
- By Mel on 02-25-16
By: Sharon Guskin
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James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
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Can we ever be free
- By J. Stirling on 04-04-24
By: Percival Everett
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North Woods
- A Novel
- By: Daniel Mason
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets.
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An American Masterpiece
- By Psumissyh on 09-21-23
By: Daniel Mason
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Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
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Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
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Cutting for Stone
- A Novel
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 23 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
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An Epic Medical Novel
- By Audiophile on 07-11-09
By: Abraham Verghese
What listeners say about Rules of Civility
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rebecca
- 11-05-11
A pivotal year in 1930's Manhattan
A middle aged couple walking through a photography exhibit at MOMA in the 1960's when the wife is surprised by two photos of a friend from years ago. The rest of the book is a flashback for Katey Kontent of a golden, fast, sophisticated, pivotal year of her life.
Wonderful characters (Katey, Evelyn Ross, Tinker Grey, Wallace, Anne Grandon, and many more). This novel is fabulously visual and with a tapestry of places, characters and books.
Rebecca Lowman's narration was spot on. Many driveway moments with this book. I can't wait to see what Towles writes next.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Katharine
- 08-04-11
Miscast Narrator
Rebecca Lowman, whose reading contributed to making Anthropology of an American Girl kind of a bummer, is, in my opinion miscast as reader of this book. Her voice and manner of speaking are too contemporary for the period of the story. I haven't finished listening yet, so will reserve judgment.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Jbug
- 10-27-11
Thoroughly enjoyed story and reader
I really enjoyed this book. The story was easy to follow, plenty of interest and well written. The reader was also excellent. Highly recommend to women. Don't think the guys will care for this one much.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Darlene Shemanski
- 08-08-11
Well written!
Even though I thought the plot was that interesting, I found I wanted to keep listening to find out what was going to happen... very interesting, and well written... we would all like to be as clever as Kate, but we wouldn't really like to be her!
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3 people found this helpful
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- DANA
- 08-31-11
highly recommend
I loved this book! Set in New York society in the late 1930's, it is a tale of the times. Narration was spectacular.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 12-01-11
Excellent listen
Although I'm aware of many of the details and the era in which this book was set, I found the perceptions and intrepretations by the author (of the characters & the time period) enjoyable and enlightening. I hope we hear more from this author.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Susan
- 03-20-12
Very enjoyable
I especially loved the setting of New York in the 1930s. It was glamorous and gritty, and the characters were always going somewhere intriguing. This made the book a great escape for me. I liked the story and that it was unpredictable yet believable. At times, I felt the main character was a little aloof and I wished I could understand her motivations and personality a bit better. But the narration was lovely and the book was very enjoyable overall.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dana B. Miller
- 05-30-12
this is the best novel i've read in ages
Would you consider the audio edition of Rules of Civility to be better than the print version?
i didn't read the print version but the performance was pitch perfect.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Rules of Civility?
there are so many crystal-perfect moments in this book, i can't even choose when asked to pick 'one of the most memorable moments'. meeting tinker, the accident, katey getting her hair colored and buying the dress to wear on her birthday, katey and tinker in the cabin, katey and tinker down in his brother's tenement apartment....i could go on and on.
Which character ??? as performed by Rebecca Lowman ??? was your favorite?
katey, katey, katey.
If you could rename Rules of Civility, what would you call it?
my crystalline year.
Any additional comments?
this is literature. the book sings, it buzzes, it offers metaphors that are at once original and so spot on, they're like poetry of old. a perfect marriage of poetry and prose, of plot and voice, of intellectual experience and emotional journey. everything i've read since has paled...and much that i've read before has, too.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ada
- 08-12-11
Ho-hum narrator, excellent book!
I loved this book. I found myself wanting to drop "swell" and "hey sis!" into my daily vocabulary! It inspired me to read some Agatha Christie, and play more games with my friends over Martinis. In other words, the author transported me to the late 1930's, and I say thank you! I wish I could have really lived then, what a great time to be alive....other than the depression, but hey, we're going through that today and with half as much class.
New York was it's own character in the book. I felt like I got a private tour, how I would love to through snowbals in the street with the kids, or listen to my neighbor play piano music in the evenings.
All that being said about the book, the narrator came close to killing all the fun. I found myself getting the sense that Katie was a beautiful woman that men were drawn to, but left to the melancholy tones of the narrator, you'd never know it. She made a fun story, oddly boring. I would liken it to Ban Stein singing you "Happy Birthday"....are you tracking with me? If only they had given someone a bit more fun a crack at it. I imagine it being read by a smart sassy woman like the one being portrayed, this narrator was quite the opposite of the heroine which just sucked the fun right out sometimes.
Still worth the listen though, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Amor, you can take me to New York anytime!!!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Keila
- 09-22-11
Great book!
I thoroughly enjoyed the beautifully written prose of this engaging story about a young woman in New York City during the late 1930s. Certain parts of the book may have been a little slow but overall the experience was delightful. I would highly recommend!
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1 person found this helpful