The milieu of early-20th-century New York City remains almost exclusively the purview of Edith Wharton, and any author who dares to set their novels in the same time period will suffer in the comparison. To his credit, Gregory Murphy isn’t as interested in the manners and moirés of the time as Wharton was. By necessity, 
Like his character on The West Wing, White House speechwriter Sam Seaborn, Rob Lowe stays admirably on message in his new memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. He’s at pains to paint himself as a grounded, levelheaded man who has (mostly) successfully navigated the rapids of early fame and success, debilitating personal crises and 
Imagine if, instead of finding defeat at the hands of the crafty, debauched Europeans, Henry James’ heroines triumphed, and found love, money and social position across the Atlantic? The result would be something like the real lives of Maryland’s Caton sisters—Marianne, Louisa, Bess and Emily, vividly recreated by biographer Jehanne Wake in Sisters of Fortune 
Ben Dolnick takes on a lot of themes in his second novel, You Know Who You Are, from the effects of losing a matriarch on a family to the ambivalent bond between brothers. But while he succeeds at some level with all of them, the greatest accomplishment of this book is Dolnick’s skillful recreation of 
