By Amor Towles

My favorite of the year! His third and best book. Towles manages to weave these incredible stories with layers of characters and experiences moving back and forth with each one’s story coming out in due time. He pulls in historical and literary references with ease making them seamlessly fit into the story he is telling. In this book, you meet some very memorable characters, Emmett and his brother Billy and Ulysses and Duchess and Townhouse and Woolly. All of them are connected mainly through time at a work home in lieu of prison, each for varied misdeeds, some trivial and others tragic. Following their stays in Salina, they end up on an adventure that continually goes off the rails and just snowballs into ever more problems for them all. You will miss the characters upon finishing the book. All I can say is don’t miss this one; Towles again has written a masterpiece.