Louis Auchincloss
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English
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How did the families who live on Manhattan's Upper East Side get to where they are today? As much a penetrating social history as it is engaging fiction, East Side Story tells of the Carnochans, a family whose Scottish forebears establish themselves in New York's textile business during the Civil War. From there they quickly move on to seize prominent positions in the country's top schools and Manhattan's elite firms. As the novel unfolds, family...
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In this novel by the author of Honorable Men, a hot-shot corporate lawyer will sacrifice anything for success in 1980s Manhattan.
Bob Service is a thirty-two-year-old crack lawyer with blood as cold and clear as a five-dollar martini. His god is power, and his morals are ever tempered by expediency. His goals far exceed an imminent partnership in a big New York law firm.
Bob's "perfect" marriage to Alice, a graceful and intelligent literary agent,...
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The author of Exit Lady Masham explores the lives of twelve members of a high society ladies' book club in New York over the course of sixty years.
"If I have a bias it is in my suspicion that women are intellectually and intuitively superior to men," writes Christopher Gates, the narrator of this book. "But," he adds, "I certainly never thought they were "nicer." And I very much doubt that anyone could think so who was raised, as I was, in a society...
4) Three Lives
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English
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Three Lives, more radically than any other work of the time* in English, brought the language back to life. Not the life of the peasantry or the emotions or the proletariat but life as it was lived by everybody living in the century, the average or normal life as the naturalists had seen it. Gertrude Stein in this work tried to coordinate the composition of the language with the process of consciousness, which... was to her a close reflex of the total...
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In this novel by the author of The Golden Calves set in 1930s high society, a young man recounts the people in his life and what he's learned from them.
This superb gallery of portraits gathers its wit and resonance from the discerning eye of the central narrator, Dan Ruggles, who in the course of unraveling the dreams, doubts, and loyalties of those around him inevitably reveals his own.
Dan spends his boyhood in the company of old-money aunts...
6) Watchfires
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The marriage of Dexter and Rosalie Fairchild-a relationship reflecting the security and privilege of their upper-class New York City lives-is disrupted by personal and political tensions arising from the Civil War.
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At the time of his death, Louis Auchincloss-enemy of bores, self-pity, and gossip less than fresh-had just finished taking on a subject he had long avoided: himself. His memoir confirms that, despite the spark of his fiction, Auchincloss himself was the most entertaining character he has created. No traitor to his class but occasionally its critic, he returns us to his Society which was, he maintains, less interesting than its members admitted. You...
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From one of America's greatest men of letters, our sublime master of manners, comes his novel, Her Infinite Variety. Louis Auchincloss has been called "our most astute observer of moral paradox among the affluent" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and his fiction described as that which "has always examined what makes life worth living" (Washington Post Book World). Now he brings us the rollicking tale of an unforgettable woman of mid-twentieth century America:...
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Like Francis Prescott in The Rector of Justin, Guy Prime enjoyed the distinction of having become a legend in his lifetime. But in Guy's case, the legend is one of betrayal and infamy. For the scandal of his embezzlement brought down the delicately balanced structure of the Stock Exchange. The long-honored system of self-government by mutual trust among gentlemen came to an end with the default of one of its brightest stars.
The story of Guy's fall...
10) Honorable Men
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English
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A novel about a member of the Greatest Generation wrestling with moral choices over the next generation's war in Vietnam. Chip Benedict appeared to have the best of everything: wealth, education, good looks, charm, and intelligence. Shortly before entering law school, he married Alida, a pale beauty who also had the cunning and talent to become the debutante of the year, escaping the progressively threadbare world of tarnished elegance and unpaid...
11) The Partners
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A New York Times–bestselling novel of love, money, and ambition among the employees of a white-shoe law firm. Louis Auchincloss is writing here at the top of his remarkable powers as an observer of contemporary America. The Partners is a group portrait of men - and women in what is mostly a man's world - whose common bond is their work. Within that bond each one pursues different answers to the search for money, power, love, revenge, or a meaning...
12) Dark Lady
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The offices, penthouses, and suburban chateaux of New York are the setting for Louis Auchincloss's The Dark Lady. Spanning three decades from the 1930s to the McCarthy era, the novel chronicles a powerful woman's rise and the human toll it exacts.
In a world where birth and style count nearly as much as wealth, Elesina Dart is supremely equipped to star. Lovely, well-born, bright, even moderately talented as an actress, Elesina seems perversely bent...
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Widely considered Louis Auchincloss's greatest novel, The Rector of Justin is an astute dissection of the social mores of the Northeast's privileged establishment. The story centers on Rev. Frank Prescott, the charismatic founder and rector of a prestigious Episcopal school for boys. With laser-sharp insight, Auchincloss delivers a prismatic portrait of this commanding and complicated man through the eyes of those who knew-or thought they knew-him...
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The Italian Tycoon And The Nanny
Rebecca Winters
A new dad to his orphaned nephew, Massimo needs help. Bringing the baby's beautiful aunt Julie Marchant to Italy as a nanny seems the perfect solution.
Plucked form her quiet, suburban existence, Julie is a fish out of water in Massimo's glamorous, wealthy world. But she is thrilled to be part of her nephew's life, even if it means being the hired help. More of a challenge is spending every day with...
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The author of The Vanderbilt Era examines sixteen famous friendships, from Boswell and Johnson to Hawthorne and Melville.
This delightful series of short essays explores friendship in its various forms, from true intimacy to professional detente between rivals. The friendships, literary and political, span two continents and three centuries-Boswell and Johnson, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Richelieu and Father Joseph, FDR and Harry Hopkins, Edith...
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Twenty-three biographical essays on writers admired by the award-winning author of The Education of Oscar Fairfax.
For Louis Auchincloss, life and letters are not two things but one. It therefore comes as no surprise that when he writes about writers, their lives are considered as closely as their works. He takes what today is a refreshingly unpopular position: that the artist and his art cannot be teased apart, that biography of criticism and criticism...
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The American master Louis Auchincloss offers an intimate look behind the closed doors of a prominent New York law firm. Nearing the end of his days, Adrian Suydam, half the partnership of the law firm of Suydam & Saunders, reflects on his lifelong friendship and business relationship with Ernest Saunders, a tragic and complicated man incapable of properly loving anyone. In this perceptive novel, set against the backdrop of old New York, Auchincloss...
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In this novel by the author of Three Lives, a blue blood New York lawyer recounts his life through stories of people he has encountered along the way.
Linking three generations of a Wall Street law firm, The Education of Oscar Fairfax provides a revealing portrait of the American upper classes throughout the twentieth century. The story opens in 1908, as St. Luke's Cathedral rises stone by stone on lower Broadway, and young Oscar learns a lesson...
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With this collection of short stories, Louis Auchincloss will delight his already devoted followers and win many more into the ranks. The stories, which range from studies of family manipulation to the secrets of artistic inspiration, are in fact subtle fables that probe the heart of modern American life to examine the moral confusion that exists there.
In the title story, a wealthy muralist, and patroness of the arts succumbs to the near compulsion...
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From a New York Times–bestselling author, short stories of the privileged class, spanning a century of New York history. He is our sublime master of manners, our "most astute observer of moral paradox among the affluent" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and "one of the essential American writers" (Kirkus). Now, in his fifty-seventh book, Louis Auchincloss delivers a brilliant collection of ten new, previously unpublished, stories; once again, he unfailingly...