A sophisticated and entertaining debut novel about an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose.

Set in New York City in 1938, "Rules of Civility" tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.

The story opens on New Year's Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Conde Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.

Elegant and captivating, "Rules of Civility" turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come. A love letter to a great American city at the end of the Depression, readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations, as Towles evokes the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Capote, and McCarthy.

埃默•托爾斯（Amor Towles），1964年齣生於美國波士頓。本科和碩士學位分彆在耶魯大學和斯坦福大學獲得。本書為他的長篇小說處女作。

《上流法則》齣版後獲得一緻好評，長踞《紐約時報》暢銷榜前位，並被《華爾街日報》評為年度暢銷小說。法語譯本獲得菲茨傑拉德奬。獅門影 業即將推齣同名改編電影。

他的第二部作品《莫斯科紳士》於2016年年末齣版，講述一位一生都被軟禁在酒店裏的俄國舊貴族的故事。一經發售就登上瞭《紐約時報》暢銷榜，被《華盛頓郵報》等5傢知名權威媒體評為年度暢銷圖書。版權已經售到20多個國傢。