Dear College Newspaper Editor: This is a monthly email from Vintage & Anchor Books offering new paperback books released on December 1, 2009 for book review in your college student newspaper. If you are interested in reviewing any of the books below, please let me know the 2 or 3 different _title_s you’d like to review from all the books listed below by responding to this email ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it <mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).  Also, many of the authors are available for interviews.  Since these are books sent for review purposes, the books are sent gratis. We ask, when the reviews/interviews run, that you please send us tear sheets of the reviews or _link_s to the reviews on your website. If you want to be removed from this monthly email, please let me know.  Thank you. *** Join us on Twitter and Facebook, and check out Vintage/Anchor’s blog at… Follow: http://twitter.com/VintageAnchor Read: http://vintagebooks.wordpress.com/ Fan: http://tinyurl.com/VintageAnchorFacebook *** DECEMBER PAPERBACK ORIGINALS… SPINNING TROPICS by Aska Mochizuki (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47369-1 • $15.00 • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  A lush and evocative story of expatriate life abroad and an intoxicating love affair—a sexy, smart novel about the life and loves of a young Japanese woman living and working in Vietnam. Hiro, a young Japanese woman, is teaching language courses in Vietnam. There she meets Yun, a young Vietnamese woman studying Japanese. They are instantly drawn to each other and fall in love. For both of them, it is their first time being in love with another woman. But when Hiro meets Konno, an older Japanese businessman, her friendship with him makes Yun wildly jealous. What unfolds is a complicated, ultimately devastating love triangle. Set against the backdrop of a Vietnam on the economic rise, Mochizuki brings to life the buss of motorcycles and the tastes of Vietnamese coffee and spicy papaya salads; the confines of the Vietnamese family; the lingering effects of long wars; the rich who ride the economic wave and the poor who are left behind. A HISTORY OF EGYPT by Jason Thompson (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-47352-3 • $17.00 • On Sale: 12/1/2010).  The first-ever compact, accessible, one-volume history of all 5,000 years of Egyptian history, highlighting the surprisingly strong connections between the ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs and the modern-day Arab nation. Never before has anyone attempted to tie together in a single volume the many eras of Egyptian history, usually the strictly separate domains of specialists: Prehistoric, Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, Medieval Islamic, Ottoman, British Colonial, and Modern. In taking on this daringly ambitious project, Jason Thompson makes the case that few if any other countries have as many threads of continuity running through their entire historical experience. With its unprecedented scope and lively and readable _style_, A HISTORY OF EGYPT should appeal not only to student, but also to tourists who want an overview of the land they are visiting, and anyone with a general interest in the Middle East driven by its significant role in our culture. CAIRO MODERN by Naguib Mahfouz (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-47353-0 • $15.00 • On Sale: 12/1/2010).  Newly translated, CAIRO MODERN, one of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's most daring novels, is the tale of a doomed ménage a trois.  In 1930s Cairo there are vast social and economic inequities. It is also a time when the universities have just opened to women and heady new ideas from Europe are stirring the young. Mahgub is a fiercely proud student, determined to keep both his poverty and his lack of principles secret. His lack of connections makes finding a job nearly impossible, and in his desperation he agrees to marry the mistress of a high government official in return for a job. On the wedding day he discovers that his wife-to-be is Ihsan, his best friend's beautiful former girlfriend, a poor student whose life has been ruined by her seductiveness. Despite their embarrassment, the two go through with the sham marriage and become partners in a precarious plot to make their way in Cairo's high society and outwit their ill fortune. *** DECEMBER FICTION REPRINTS… THE NARROW CORNER by W. Somerset Maugham (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47320-2 • $15.00 • 320 pages • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  Filled with adventure, passion, and intrigue, THE NARROW CORNER is a classic tale of the sea by one of the twentieth-century's finest writers. Island hoping across the South Pacific, the esteemed Dr. Saunders is offered passage by Captain Nichols and his companion Fred Blake, two men who appear unsavory, yet any means of transportation is hard to resist. The trip turns turbulent, however, when a vicious storm forces them to seek shelter on the remote island of Kanda. There these three men fall under the spell of the sultry and stunningly beautiful Louise, and their story spirals into a wicked tale of love, murder, jealousy, and suicide. *** DECEMBER NONFICTION REPRINTS… A WRITER’S NOTEBOOK by W. Somerset Maugham (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47319-6 • $16.00 • 384 pages • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  Filled with keen observations, autobiographical notes, and the seeds of many of Maugham's greatest works, A WRITER’S NOTEBOOK is a unique and exhilarating look into a great writer's mind at work. From nearly five decades, Somerset Maugham recorded an intimate journal. In it we see the budding of his incomparable vision and his remarkable career as a writer. Covering the years from his time as a youthful medical student in London to a seasoned world traveler around the world, it is playful, sharp witted, and always revealing. Undoubtedly one of his most significant works, A WRITER’S NOTEBOOK is a must for Maugham fans and anyone interested in the creative process. SHAKESPEARE AND MODERN CULTURE by Marjorie Garber (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-39096-7 • $17.00 • 368 pages • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  From one of the world's premier Shakespeare scholars comes a magisterial new study whose premise is that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare. Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as naturally true: ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, from James Joyce's Ulysses to George W. Bush's reading list. From the persistence of difference in Othello to the matter of character in Hamlet to the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet, Garber discusses how these ideas have been re-imagined in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news, and in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law. SHAKESPEARE AND MODERN CULTURE is a brilliant recasting of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of the protean Shakespeare. WHITE HEAT: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-45630-4 • $16.95 • 432 pages • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  WHITE HEAT is the first book to portray the remarkable relationship between America's most beloved poet and the fiery abolitionist who first brought her work to the public. As the Civil War raged, an unlikely friendship was born between the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary figure who ran guns to Kansas and commanded the first Union regiment of black soldiers. When Dickinson sent Higginson four of her poems he realized he had encountered a wholly original genius; their intense correspondence continued for the next quarter century. In WHITE HEAT Brenda Wineapple tells an extraordinary story about poetry, politics, and love, one that sheds new light on her subjects and on the roiling America they shared. *** DECEMBER DRAMA REPRINTS… FIVE MODERN NŌ PLAYS by Yukio Mishima (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47311-0 • $15.00 • 224 pages • On Sale: 12/1/2009).  Japanese Nō drama is one of the great art forms that has fascinated people throughout the world. The late Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's outstanding post-war writers, infused new life into the form by using it for plays that preserve the _style_ and inner spirit of Nō and are at the same time so modern, so direct, and intelligible that they could, as he suggested, be played on a bench in Central Park. Here are five of his Nō plays, stunning in their contemporary nature and relevance—and finally made available again for readers to enjoy. *** GALLEYS and Manu_script_s are NOW available for these Vintage & Anchor Books Paperback Originals… Will be published in JANUARY 2010 THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF SCONES by Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-45470-6 • $15.00 • On Sale: 1/5/2010).  The New 44 Scotland Street Novel. Following the New York Times bestseller The World According to Bertie, this delightfully wry series continues with an absorbing and entertaining tale of some of Scotland’s most quirky and beloved characters—all set in the beautiful, stoic city of Edinburgh. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF SCONES finds Bertie, the precocious six-year-old, still troubled by his rather overbearing mother, Irene, but seeking his escape in the Cub Scouts. Matthew is rising to the challenge of married life with newfound strength and resolve, while Domenica epitomizes the loneliness of the long-distance intellectual. Cyril, the gold-toothed star of the whole show, succumbs to the kind of romantic temptation that no dog can resist and creates a small problem, or rather six of them, for this friend and owner Angus Lordie. THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER by Andrew Porter (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47517-6 • $14.00 • On Sale: 1/1/2010).  Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Andrew Porter’s stories offer a stunningly astute vision of contemporary American suburbia, full of tension, heartbreak, and emotional complexity—the work of an important new voice. These ten stories take us across the country—from rural Pennsylvania to Southern California to suburban Connecticut—and deep into characters struggling to find meaning in their day-to-day lives. A young man reconstructs the memory of a friend’s deadly fall. A childless couple, craving the affection of an exchange student, fails to set boundaries that would keep him safe. And in the _title_ story, a college student looking for her soul mate confronts an impossible choice. Will be published in FEBRUARY 2010 THE BOY WHO COULDN’T SLEEP AND NEVER HAD TO by D.C. Pierson (Vintage • ISBN: 978-0-307-47461-2 • $14.00 • On Sale: 2/2/2010).  When Darren Bennett meets Eric Lederer, there’s an instant connection. They share a love of drawing, the bottom rung on the cruel high school social ladder, and a pathological fear of girls. Soon they’re collaborating on a comic book that becomes a series of graphic novels that becomes a movie trilogy before they’ve actually put pen to paper. Then Eric reveals a secret: He doesn’t sleep. Ever. When word leaks out about Eric’s condition, he and Darren suddenly find themselves on the run from mysterious forces. Is it the government trying to tap into Eric’s mind, or is there something else Eric hasn’t told Darren? It could be that not sleeping is only part of what he’s capable of, and the truth is both better and worse than they could ever imagine. Brilliant in its scope and written in a sweet and utterly contemporary vice, DC Pierson’s debut will leave you rolling with laughter and running from things you thought existed only in your mind. Will be published in March 2010 THE MAEVE BINCHY WRITERS’ CLUB by Maeve Binchy (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-47385-1 • $14.95 • On Sale: 3/9/2010).  In these pages Maeve Binchy gives us unique insight into how a bestselling author writes, from finding a subject and creating good writing habits, to sustaining progress and finding a publisher. In a series of guest essays, established writers explain how to approach different genres, from stories to plays, humor to mystery. A helpful appendix includes writing awards and competitions, and a selection of websites and literary journals. In addition, six stories by Maeve Binchy, previously unpublished in the United States, appear along with a selection from her weekly columns in the Irish Times. THE BOOK OF FIRSTS by Peter D’Epiro (Anchor • ISBN: 978-0-307-38843-8 • $16.00 • On Sale: 3/9/2010).  Peter D'Epiro makes this handy overview of human history both fun and thought-provoking with his list of the major firsts