#6 Rules of Civility by Amor Towles On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
This author did a nice job capturing the feel of this time period. As to the characters, I'm still thinking about them. Not sure about their motivations.
