The same stories have been told since the dawn of time, but the way they’re told is what’s always changing. Books in 2009 will be no exception. Check out some of last year’s hottest literary trends—and how they’ll translate. Happiness Whether it was Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living or The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, 2008 was all about finding inner peace. And if you didn’t? Tough shit! In January 2009, Eric G. Wilson’s Against Happiness will be released to celebrate the sorrow that causes so many people to strive for more. As the book jacket says, “It’s time to throw off the shackles of positivity and relish the blues that make us human.” Read more Read it in print

The Way of Herodotus By Justin Marozzi, Out Jan. 1 Marozzi pens a travel narrative that follows the footsteps of that first travel writer, Herodotus, through the Mediterranean and Middle East. Even travel writing has gone Meta! To Sound in the Know:This isn´t just a dusty look at history: the index has references to "Sex and Sexuality" and "Bestiality." A Long Time Coming: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and Historic Election of Barack Obama By Evan Thomas, Out Jan. 6 Here they come—the Obama campaign books! Keep your head down to avoid getting hit by the superlatives! This one chronicles the inside story of the 2008 election and includes reporting from the Newsweek staff. To Sound In the Know: Thomas once said of the media that, "our job is to bash the president." No word yet on whether that’s also true of candidates. Read more Read it in print

WHEN NOVELIST NAMI MUN first came to the United States, the South Korea native was immediately riveted with her new home. “We arrived in LaGuardia airport and I just bolted and left my family,” says Mun, who remembers being impressed with everyone’s English-speaking ability. Mun, then eight years old, ran through the terminal and was only forced to stop running when she hit an automatic door with her face. “I’ve always had a can-do attitude, it must be in my DNA,” says Mun, who has worked as an Avon lady, dance hostess, street vendor, photojournalist, bartender and criminal investigator. Now a writing teacher and novelist, Mun, who will read on Jan. 12 at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, has published her first novel, Miles From Nowhere loosely based on her experience as a teenage runaway. Read more Read it in print

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN one’s self-destructive tendencies can’t be therapized, medicated or even loved away? What if it’s not a phase, something you grow out of? Laney lives in New Jersey with a saintly husband and two kids, yet she can barely get through the banalities of civilized life—school drop-off, a vacation, a baseball game— without a bump of coke here, a wildly inappropriate tryst there. It’s the sort of acting out that a good man, a good shrink, rehab and even reconciling with her absent father hasn’t been able to fix. Good mothers, especially welloff ones, aren’t supposed to fall down after taking too many Xanax.They’re not supposed to get caught licking cocaine off the bathroom floor. Read more Read it in print

After seventeen years as a cop in the New York City Vandal Squad—a team of police officers dedicated to the crackdown of graffiti in subway stations—ex-officer Joe Rivera offers a look ins Read more

Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasure of a Handmade Life By Jenna Woginrich, Out Dec. 1 A city girl documents her journey from a desk job to a life of self-reliance on a small homestead in Northern Idaho where she trades in consumer culture for raising chickens, growing vegetables and churning her own butter. There are bound to be fantastic hints in here for the budget-tightening going on these fantastic economic times—maybe even some Meghan Daum hasn’t already written. To Sound in the Know:Woginrich has been blogging about her experiences for a while now at the Huffington Post.We hear Arianna makes her churn the butter. Read more Read it in print

Let’s face it: Reading tour guides of NYC is a guilty pleasure. Reading stale advice from some doltish non–New Yorker about how to navigate the subway or where to have a picnic (Central Park! What a surprise!) is funny. Ultimately, however, most tour guides are completely useless. Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in New York is a welcome exception. With a fresh, irreverent view on places known and unknown in the city, Stuart injects some much-needed Botox into the wrinkly face of the overproduced travel guides that newcomers and tourists alike cling to. Through funny anecdotes and narrative storytelling, Stuart looks at the city through a lens—or the bottom of a glass—that’s not covered in the grime of stale cupcakes. I recently caught up with Stuart—who’s celebrating the book’s release on Dec. 4 with live music and free beer at The Delancey—to chat about being young, broke and beautiful in this sprawling, thankless city. Read more

Dusty Springfield was feisty. She loved her wine and she loved her women. Unless she was loving her men. A chestnut-haired guitar strummer born Mary O’Brien from a nice British family in Ealing, London, she began life as a folkster playing in a trio called the Springfields. And then she discovered Motown. Reborn as Dusty Springfield, she exceeded the limitations of Catholic middle-class good taste by embracing soul music and a teased and tortured platinum bouffant that announced “I am Dusty, hear me roar.” Read more

Menger-Andersons book defies classification as novel or short-story collection. Its a series of stories about a family of doctors descending from van Schulers arrival in New Amsterdam in 1664 to the work of Dr. Elizabeth Steenwycks, a medical researcher in modern-day Manhattan. Read more Read it in print

DO YOU FIND words like “dudescussion,” “vagibberish” and “masturdate” funny? No? Good, you are a healthy reader. Just checking. Earlier this month, HarperCollins published Brocabulary:The New Man-i-festo of Dude Talk by Daniel Maurer. Irony is skipped here, however, as the writing rollicks in the puerility of its subject matter; one reviewer, Carol Hartsell, wrote that Brocabulary is “targeted toward the coveted 18-34 date rapist demographic.” Read more Read it in print