Author Guide · Fiction
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Amor Towles spent about twenty years at an investment firm in New York, from 1991 to 2012, before he could write full time. His first novel, Rules of Civility, came out in 2011, when he was in his mid-forties. Five years later A Gentleman in Moscow, about a Russian count sentenced in 1922 to spend the rest of his life inside the Hotel Metropol, spent 59 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and later became a television series with Ewan McGregor. His books, by his own count more than eight million copies sold, keep returning to the mid-twentieth century: Manhattan in 1938, Moscow under Stalin, a road trip out of Nebraska in 1954. This guide covers his five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2011–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Amor Towles has published five books of fiction: Rules of Civility (2011), Eve in Hollywood (2013), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), The Lincoln Highway (2021) and the collection Table for Two (2024). Start with A Gentleman in Moscow, his best-known book; the others follow on from it in different directions.
Where to Start with Amor Towles
If you want his defining book
→ A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) — thirty-two years in one Moscow hotel.
If you want a faster, plot-driven novel
→ The Lincoln Highway (2021) — ten days on the road in 1954.
If you want 1930s New York
→ Rules of Civility (2011) — his debut, set in Manhattan in 1938.
If you want to sample him in shorter pieces
→ Table for Two (2024) — six stories and a Hollywood novella.
5 Amor Towles Books, in Order
Rules of Civility
On New Year’s Eve 1937, Katey Kontent, a 25-year-old secretary on Wall Street, and her boardinghouse roommate Eve Ross meet a handsome banker, Tinker Grey, in a Greenwich Village jazz bar. Over the following year Katey moves up through Manhattan society while keeping her own counsel. Published by Viking, it was a New York Times bestseller, and its French translation won the Prix Fitzgerald in 2012.
Eve in Hollywood
A chain of six stories, first published as an e-book in June 2013, that follows Eve Ross from Rules of Civility after she steps off the train in Los Angeles in September 1938. Told by several narrators, it moves through the film sets and hotels of late-1930s Hollywood. An expanded version appears as the novella in Table for Two (2024).
A Gentleman in Moscow
In 1922 a Bolshevik tribunal spares Count Alexander Rostov because of a poem attributed to him, and sentences him instead to house arrest for life in the Hotel Metropol, a short walk from the Kremlin. Moved from his suite to a small room on the sixth floor, he lives through the next three decades of Soviet history without leaving the building. It spent 59 weeks on the New York Times hardcover list, was a finalist for the 2016 Kirkus Prize, and became an eight-part series with Ewan McGregor in 2024.
The Lincoln Highway
In June 1954 eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska from a juvenile work farm in Salina, Kansas, after his father’s death. He plans to take his eight-year-old brother Billy west, but two boys from the farm, Duchess and Woolly, have stowed away and take the brothers’ car to New York instead. The story covers ten days and switches between narrators. It reached number one on the New York Times list and was Amazon’s best book of 2021.
Table for Two
Six stories based in New York, most of them around the year 2000, about chance encounters and the compromises inside marriages; one, “The Line”, starts with a Russian peasant who makes a living standing in queues in Moscow. The second half is “Eve in Hollywood”, a novella told from seven points of view, which follows Eve Ross through 1930s Los Angeles during the making of Gone with the Wind.
In What Order to Read Amor Towles
The three novels stand alone: The Lincoln Highway is not a sequel to A Gentleman in Moscow, and you can read them in any order. The one thread that runs between books is Eve Ross, who first appears in Rules of Civility, gets her own stories in Eve in Hollywood and returns in the novella that closes Table for Two.
So if you want the Eve thread, read Rules of Civility before Table for Two; the 2013 e-book is optional, since the 2024 novella is an expanded version of it. Otherwise start with A Gentleman in Moscow and pick the next book by setting.
A reading path
1. A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)
2. Rules of Civility (2011)
3. The Lincoln Highway (2021)
4. Table for Two (2024)
Everything Else Amor Towles Published
Beyond the 5 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Shorter work and editing
2
2 books · 2019–2024
- 2019You Have Arrived at Your Destinationa novella in Amazon’s Forward series of stories about the future
- 2024The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winnersas guest editor, with his introduction
The years · 1964–2024
Quick facts about Amor Towles
- Known for
- Towles is known for A Gentleman in Moscow, the 2016 novel about a count under lifelong house arrest in a Moscow hotel, and for historical fiction set in the middle of the twentieth century.
- 1964
- Born in Boston
- 1991
- Joins Select Equity Group in New York
- 2024
- TV series with Ewan McGregor; Table for Two
- Born
- 1964, Boston, Massachusetts
- Education
- Yale (BA, 1987); Stanford (MA in English, 1989)
- Worked
- Select Equity Group, New York, 1991–2012, as investment manager and director of research
- Sales
- More than eight million copies, translated into over forty languages
- Adaptation
- A Gentleman in Moscow, Paramount+ and Showtime, 2024
- Lives
- Gramercy Park, Manhattan, with his wife Maggie; two children
The red mark is 2016: A Gentleman in Moscow, the novel that made his name.
How Amor Towles Writes: Confinement, Manners and the Middle of the Century
Towles sets his fiction in a narrow stretch of the twentieth century, roughly 1922 to 1954, and builds each novel around a limit. Rostov cannot leave one hotel for thirty-two years; The Lincoln Highway is held to ten days; Rules of Civility follows a single year in Manhattan. Inside those limits the books move by small scenes: a dinner, a game of cards, a conversation in a hotel bar.
Manners carry a lot of weight. Rostov keeps up the habits of an aristocrat inside a Soviet hotel, Katey Kontent learns the codes of old New York money, and the book’s title comes from the list of rules of civility the young George Washington copied out. Towles likes literary references worked into the plot, from Montaigne in A Gentleman in Moscow to the book of heroes Billy carries in The Lincoln Highway. He also changes narrators freely: The Lincoln Highway gives each chapter to one character, Duchess in the first person and the rest in the third.
His tone is warm and his main characters mostly decent, and the endings tend to reward patience rather than punish it. For writers with the same period settings and the same attention to character, see Authors like Amor Towles.
Watch
Amor Towles at the 2017 National Book Festival
Towles speaks at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in 2017, the year after A Gentleman in Moscow was published.
Frequently asked questions about Amor Towles’s books
How many books has Amor Towles written?
Five books of fiction: Rules of Civility (2011), Eve in Hollywood (2013), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), The Lincoln Highway (2021) and Table for Two (2024). He also wrote the novella You Have Arrived at Your Destination (2019) for Amazon’s Forward series and edited The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners.
What are Amor Towles’s books in order?
Rules of Civility (2011), Eve in Hollywood (2013), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), The Lincoln Highway (2021) and Table for Two (2024).
Where should I start with Amor Towles?
With A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), his best-known novel, about Count Alexander Rostov’s life under house arrest in the Hotel Metropol. If you prefer a faster plot, start with The Lincoln Highway instead.
What is Amor Towles’s most famous book?
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). It spent 59 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and was adapted as an eight-part television series starring Ewan McGregor in 2024.
Is The Lincoln Highway a sequel to A Gentleman in Moscow?
No. The Lincoln Highway (2021) is a standalone novel with different characters, set in America in 1954. None of his novels form a series; the only recurring character is Eve Ross, from Rules of Civility, Eve in Hollywood and Table for Two.
What is The Lincoln Highway about?
Over ten days in June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson, just released from a juvenile work farm in Kansas, plans to drive west with his eight-year-old brother Billy. Two boys from the farm, Duchess and Woolly, have stowed away and take the car to New York instead. Each chapter is told by a different character.
What is Table for Two about?
Table for Two (2024) contains six stories based in New York, most set around the year 2000, and the novella “Eve in Hollywood”, which follows Eve Ross from Rules of Civility through 1930s Los Angeles.
Is A Gentleman in Moscow a TV series?
Yes. An eight-part series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Rostov and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Anna Urbanova premiered in March 2024 on Paramount+ and on Showtime in the United States.
Is The Lincoln Highway being made into a film?
A film is in development at Warner Bros., with Christopher Storer attached to write and direct. As of October 2026 no release date has been announced.
How do you pronounce Amor Towles?
“A-more tolls”: the first syllable of Amor rhymes with “hay”, and Towles sounds like “tolls”.
Is Amor Towles his real name?
Yes, it is his given name, not a pseudonym. He was born in Boston in 1964 to Stokley Porter Towles, an investment banker, and Holly Hollingsworth.
Where was Amor Towles born, and what nationality is he?
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1964 and is American. He grew up in the Boston area, studied at Yale and Stanford, and has lived in New York since 1989.
Is Amor Towles married?
Yes. He lives in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, with his wife Maggie; they have two children.
What did Amor Towles do before writing?
He worked in investment management for about twenty years. From 1991 to 2012 he was at Select Equity Group in New York, as an investment manager and director of research, and he left after the success of Rules of Civility (2011).
Is Amor Towles writing a new book?
His most recent book is Table for Two (2024). He usually announces new books shortly before publication; his website, amortowles.com, is the place to check.
Footnotes
- Amor Towles — Wikipedia
- Amor Towles: Bio — amortowles.com
- A Gentleman in Moscow — Wikipedia
- The Lincoln Highway (novel) — Wikipedia
- Table for Two — Penguin Random House
- With four kids in an old Studebaker, Amor Towles takes readers on a real joyride — NPR, 2021
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
— Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), the Grand Duke’s advice to the young Rostov
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