The Thread®

Kerri Miller introduces you to the last three books in her year-end must-reads of 2021.

Imagine working on a novel for ten years about a world enduring a global plague only to have it published during a real pandemic. That's what's happening to Minneapolis writer Sequoia Nagamatsu. He has mixed feelings about the timing, but he hopes it helps people struggling with the impact of COVID.

Ivan Maisel lost his 21-year-old son to suicide in 2015. It was a shattering moment. But Maisel and his wife had no choice but to go on living without Max. In “I Keep Trying to Catch Your Eye,” Maisel chronicles his journey through grief.

It would have been easy for the famous journalist to fall into the nostalgia trap with his memoir, which chronicles his earliest years in the newspaper business. Happily, he doesn't.

Lost & Found is as much a philosophical reckoning with the experiences of losing and finding as it is a record of New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz's personal grief and love stories.

Graphic novelist Henry Barajas is finding success by incorporating Mesoamerican history — and his own family's past — into his work.

Penn got his start in stoner comedies, then took a hiatus from acting to work for the Obama administration. He shares stories from his life and career in the memoir You Can't Be Serious.

Nikki May's novel captures issues of modern city living: women's evolving roles in home and work, interracial relationships, multicultural identity and competition that runs under many friendship.

A contemporary civil war in America wouldn’t much resemble the last one, says political scientist Barbara F. Walter in her new book. But it could happen again — and if you’re skeptical about that, she believes you suffer from a lack of imagination that puts the country at risk.

Elise Bryant tells a fantastic tale full of shenanigans and escapades, while also delving into deeper issues of race and the perception of a successful future for young people of color.