There is no time like being in your 20s with the city at your command– friends, finery and a constant stream of alcohol. Tinker provides Kate and Eve the coveted entrance into the the lives of the elite of NYC. They cut a rug with people with names like Bitsy and Dickie, Peaches and Bucky in places like Central Park, Madison Avenue, The Ritz and the Empire State.

These gals can fend for themselves– who needs boys tonight? Little do they realize their chance meeting with the handsome, dapper, Wall Street banker Theodore “Tinker” Grey will set off a chain of events that will change the trajectory of their current paths, and not necessarily for the better. They scrape together a whopping 3 dollars to drink the night away at The Hot Spot– an underground jazz bar that they discovered first. Katey and Evie vow to make 1938 the best year yet. It is New Year’s Eve, 1937, and things are starting to look up for America. She lives in a boarding house with Evelyn Ross, a beauty from the mid-west, who is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her well-off father. Katherine (Katya) Kontent is the daughter of a Russian immigrant, a working girl, and on her own in the Big Apple. This fine crackerjack of a book takes place post depression in New York City. Rules of Civility is on my First Annual Summer Reading List (2013).Wallace: You sure have a lot of books in here. I also loved Katey’s witty commentary on NY society, which was essential to the strong “view from the outside” perspective that her character brings. It added some depth that I was missing, but not so much as to take away from the book’s fun nature. There is a certain point where something surprising is revealed that caused me to take a fresh look at things – and that’s what made me like this book even more. This was fun and entertaining, but didn’t have much depth to it. Through the first half of this book, I thought it was a lighthearted look at New York “society” in the 1930′s. The unlikely friendship of Katey and Eve (two young women struggling in 1930′s New York) with wealthy banker Tinker Grey gives the two girls access to the world of the New York social elite. Link to this book on Amazon Plot Summary of Rules of Civility:

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Rules of civility review