Eve turned around and headed back outside onto the lilting porch. Rather appropriately, Selznick had built O’Hara’s plantation house on the highest point of the back forty, and as Eve looked off into the distance, she found herself thrilled by the view. Not by the sun, which was sinking somewhere over the Pacific; nor by the isolated lights in the valley, which had begun to flicker in domestic tranquility. What gave her that tingling feeling was the recognition that for as far as the eye could see, there was no skyline to speak of. No high-rises, no office towers, no bridges imposing themselves upon the horizon.

How different it was from New York, where those tiresome silhouettes incessantly reminded its citizens that theirs was a city built on merit and effort and achievement. Los Angeles wasn’t built on any of that, thought Eve with a sense of serenity. It was built on something more tenuous, essential, and rare.

Eve looked at her watch.

It was just after five—too late to join Prentice for tea, but hours before she was due to meet Livvy at the Tropicana. She wondered if the silver-haired banker was sitting on his bench at Chester’s. If she hurried, she just might be able to join him for a cup of coffee and a little conversation before she headed home.

THE END

An Excerpt From Rules of Civility

Read on for an excerpt from the first chapter of Amor Towles’s novel, RULES OF CIVILITY, also available from Penguin Books.

Praise for Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

“An irresistible and astonishingly assured debut about working-class women and world-weary WASPs in 1930s New York.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine, “Best Fiction 2011”

“With this snappy period piece, Towles resurrects the cinematic black-and-white Manhattan of the golden age.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“A wonderful debut novel . . . Towles [plays] with some of the great themes of love and class, luck and fated encounters that animated Wharton’s novels.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Put on some Billie Holiday, pour a dry martini and immerse yourself in the eventful life of Katey Kontent. . . . [Towles] clearly knows the privileged world he’s writing about, as well as the vivid, sometimes reckless characters who inhabit it.”

—People

“This very good first novel about striving and surviving in Depression-era Manhattan deserves attention. . . . The great strength of Rules of Civility is in the sharp, sure-handed evocation of Manhattan in the late ’30s.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Glamorous Gotham in one to relish . . . a book that enchants on first reading and only improves on the second.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Glittering . . . filled with snappy dialogue, sharp observations and an array of terrifically drawn characters . . . Towles writes with grace and verve about the mores and manners of a society on the cusp of radical change.”

—NPR.org

“Brilliantly realized . . . a sharply stylish debut.”

—The Boston Globe