Author Guide · Lisanne Swart
Books Written by Amor Towles
Amor Towles spent two decades as an investment manager before Rules of Civility became a bestseller and let him retire into writing full time. His novels return again and again to a specific kind of person: someone who reinvents themselves, or holds their identity together with genuine discipline, inside circumstances that would flatten a lesser character — a house-arrested aristocrat, a striver climbing 1930s New York society, a teenager trying to hold his family together on the road. Where Gatsby’s reinvention curdles, Towles’s protagonists mostly hold, which is its own kind of argument about character.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 books · Fiction · Updated August 2026 · ~6 min read
Quick answer
Amor Towles has published five books: Rules of Civility (2011), the novella Eve in Hollywood (2013), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), The Lincoln Highway (2021), and the story collection Table for Two (2024). Start with A Gentleman in Moscow — it’s his most acclaimed and most commonly recommended entry point.
Key facts
- Background: Yale College, MA in English from Stanford; worked as an investment manager in New York for two decades before writing full time
- Books written: 5, published 2011–2024
- Sales: More than 8 million copies collectively; A Gentleman in Moscow alone has sold over 2 million
- Best-known book: A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), over 40 weeks on the NYT bestseller list
- Recurring setting: Mid-20th-century New York, Moscow, and America
Why trust this list: Every book below is one I’ve read in full. Curated by Lisanne Swart.
In this guide
Rules of Civility
On New Year’s Eve 1937, Katey Kontent is killing time in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when a chance encounter with a handsome banker pulls her into New York’s upper social echelons. Towles’s debut is a coming-of-age novel about ambition, class mobility, and how quickly the rules governing who belongs where can shift under a sharp, self-possessed woman’s feet.
The book that got him out of investment management and into writing full time, and the clearest early statement of his recurring interest: characters who reinvent their social position through wit and nerve rather than luck alone.
Eve in Hollywood
A novella following Eve Ross, a supporting character from Rules of Civility, as she leaves New York behind and reinvents herself again in Golden Age Hollywood. Originally released as a serialized e-book, it’s a shorter, lighter companion piece to the first novel.
Not essential on its own, but a satisfying extension for readers who finished Rules of Civility and wanted more of that world and its supporting cast.
A Gentleman in Moscow
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal and sentenced to house arrest for life — not in prison, but in the Hotel Metropol, where he must now live in an attic room instead of his usual suite. Over the following three decades, as Soviet Russia transforms outside the hotel’s doors, Rostov builds a full, disciplined, quietly extraordinary life within the only space he’s allowed.
His most acclaimed novel and the one most readers mean when they recommend him. A masterclass in how much interior richness a character can construct inside genuinely severe external constraint — ritual and discipline as a form of freedom rather than its opposite.
The Lincoln Highway
In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett returns home to his younger brother Billy after fifteen months in a juvenile work farm for involuntary manslaughter, planning a fresh start out West. Two friends from the work farm have other plans, redirecting the group toward New York instead. The novel unfolds over eighteen days, narrated by multiple voices, as a straightforward road trip goes increasingly sideways.
His most plot-driven and fastest-moving book — a good choice if A Gentleman in Moscow’s slower, more meditative pace isn’t what you’re after. Structured almost like a countdown, which makes it his most propulsive read.
Table for Two
A collection of six short stories set mostly in New York around the year 2000, followed by a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood featuring Eve Ross, the character from Eve in Hollywood and Rules of Civility. The stories focus on brief encounters and the small compromises that hold marriages and relationships together.
His first return to short fiction since Eve in Hollywood, and a good entry point if you want to sample his voice before committing to a full novel.
Frequently asked questions
From the bookshelf
Find your next book — hand-picked, not algorithmically sorted.
If characters who build a full life inside real constraint are your thing, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author pages, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
