Louis Auchincloss
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The author of False Gods offers eight stories looking into the lives of the wealthy, but troubled, elite.
Set in various decades throughout twentieth century, this entertaining short story collection reveals the inner lives of America's upper classes in the polished, elegant prose that is Louis Auchincloss's signature. The intricate balance of power in a marriage, the artist's hunger for inspiration, the responsibilities of privileged youth on the...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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In The Headmaster's Dilemma, Louis Auchincloss revisits the prep school world of his most famous novel. That book, The Rector of Justin, published in 1964, took the form of a fictional biography, giving the reader the full life story of a much beloved and revered, if also feared, headmaster of an exclusive New England prep school. In The Headmaster's Dilemma, we see up close what happens when a school's ideals and founding principles collide with...
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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...
14) The embezzler
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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 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...
16) The 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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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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Felix Leitner has been a celebrated lawyer and political commentator, an advisor to presidents, an author of influential books, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist. For decades, he professed an unswerving commitment to intellectual truth. His stands weren't always popular, but in the eyes of millions, he had the stature of an oracle. Now he is in his eighties and confined to a nursing home, and his longtime research assistant and protégé, Roger...
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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,...
20) 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...