Louis Auchincloss
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A New York Times–bestselling author puts a modern twist on the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic with this novel of wealthy 1950s society. The year is 1953, and the coastal village of Glenville, on the opulent north shore of Long Island, is shaken by scandal. Ambrose Vollard, the managing partner of a prestigious Wall Street law firm, gets word of an alleged affair in his family. Most astonishing, the adulterer is Rodman Jessup, Vollard's son-in-law,...
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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...
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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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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...
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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 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...
9) Three Lives
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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...
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Twelve stories contemplating destiny and detailing the life of Manhattan's upper class over the course of one hundred years, from the author of Honorable Men.
It's only twelve miles long and two miles wide, but it has more money for its area, more history packed into its relatively brief settlement, and more emotional and intellectual energy coursing through its streets than any other place on earth. Manhattan is the setting for all of Louis Auchincloss's...
12) 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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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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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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This New York Times-bestselling author's story collection 'displays consistent excellence in observing the spheres of art, law, money and society' (Publishers Weekly). Whether set in the world of Wall Street, the nineteenth-century Virginia aristocracy, or a boys' school in New England, the short stories of Louis Auchincloss reveal a remarkable insight into the things that drive us and make us human. In this volume, the author collects a wide range...
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Tony Lowder is the able and good-looking grandson of an Irish immigrant who prospered as a contractor-and left behind a family whose station in life is on the decline. That is except for Tony, who has a promising future in politics. He has married into an old New York family, and his wife, Lee, cares for their two children and tolerates Tony's continuing affair with wealthy Joan Conway, the mistress who dates back to his single days. But there...
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A cat may look at a king, says an old proverb. The king is the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, whose fabled court at Versailles was the wonder of Europe; the cat is the watchful chronicler, Louis de Rouvroy, second duc de Saint-Simon, author of the famous Memoirs which are the definitive record of Louis' reign.
Auchincloss has conceived his novel as an extension of the Memoirs, in which Saint-Simon reveals his own story-as well as a great deal about...
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Natica Chauncey, the daughter of a financier ruined by the Great Depression, is determined to regain the social status she has lost. She relies on a kindly matron for her glancing acquaintance with the aristocracy of Long Island-but she is haunted by a yearning for more. Coming of age at a time when anything more than a modest show of ambition does not become a lady, she must seek her own fortune in the fortunes of others. And so, with little more...
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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...