Rules of civility
Amor Towles

In 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’s how quickly New York City comes about, like a weathervane, or the head of a cobra. Times tells which.