David Gilbert’s & Sons opens with the funeral of Charles Topping, a pillar of New York’s elite establishment. We zero in on the man delivering the eulogy: his best friend A.N. Dyer, the reclusive author whose novel defined a generation à la J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. As the story unfolds, we follow Dyer, who, faced with his own mortality, tries to bring his three estranged sons back together to tie up the loose ends left behind by a life in which professional ambition and narcissism trumped familial obligations. It’s an absolute page-turner — unexpected twists; dark secrets — that also paints the perfect picture of Cheever Country (Manhattan’s Upper East Side) with all the pit stops of a true insider. A born-and-bred New Yorker, Gilbert doesn’t just pull the curtain back on the nattily dressed characters who inhabit this world, we’re right up there in the midst of the intrigue.