A New York Times –bestselling novel of love, money, and ambition among the employees of a white-shoe law firm. From a renowned chronicler of American high society, this is a novel set in the small but distinguished New York law firm of Shepard, Putney & Cox in the early 1970s. The son of a rich mother and a socially ambitious father, Beekman "Beeky" Ehninger makes a successful career for himself in the narrow upper echelons of his profession. For years, he has quietly guided his firm through numerous periods of transition—not to mention marital strife, forgery, and fraud. But as times have changed, Beeky and his colleagues must decide whether to join forces with a new and different breed—tough, but undeniably successful. The Partners is a masterful characterization of moral men navigating an amoral world, of lawyers, their families, and the rich and powerful people they serve. "Vintage Auchincloss—sensitive, ironic, sympathetic, affecting. Auchincloss is particularly good with the interior reality of seemingly minor conflicts; he also shows, over and over again, that seemingly large and dramatic conflicts are often not the important ones." — New York magazine