Amor Towles

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov, deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, is sentenced to house arrest in an attic room in the Metropol Hotel. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a larger world of emotional discovery, whilst some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

In June, 1954, 18-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served 15 months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction - to the city of New York. Spanning just 10 days and told from multiple points of view, Towles' third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters and themes.

On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate New York City jazz bar trying to stretch three dollars as far as it will go.

But a chance encounter with the handsome banker at the next table changes everything, opening the door to the upper echelons of New York society and a glittering new social circle. Plunged into a dizzy world of cocktail parties, sprawling mansions and glamorous magazine offices, Katey soon learns that there are rules to play by and riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat...