New Tom Wolfe book to come out in '09

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, has acquired the North American rights to Tom Wolfe's new novel.

Wolfe's body of work includes "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," "The Right Stuff," "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "I Am Charlotte Simmons."

His latest novel, "Back to Blood," is about class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption and ambition in Miami, the publishers said, adding the book is set to be published in 2009.

"The opportunity to work with the American master Tom Wolfe is the kind of thrill and challenge that people entering book publishing dream of. I picked 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' off a library spinner rack in 1960-something and it tore the top of my head off -- I'd never imagined a writer's voice could be that alive on the page. Everyone at Little, Brown is exhilarated to be working with Tom Wolfe to bring his new novel to readers in the Internet age," Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch said in a statement.