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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread from MPR News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread checks in with booksellers around the country about their favorite books of the moment. Listen to Ask a Bookseller to find your next favorite book.

Big Books and Bold Ideas

Big Books and Bold Ideas is a weekly series hosted by Kerri Miller every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

Sign Up for The Thread® Newsletter

Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Find reviews for new releases, as well as hidden gems you may have missed.

Talking Volumes

Talking Volumes is an annual event series featuring notable authors in conversation about their new books. Presented by MPR News and The Minnesota Star Tribune. 

Tickets are now available for our 26th season. Join award-winning journalist and MPR News host Kerri Miller (and special guest host Catharine Richart) as they talk with authors including Stacey Abrams, Patricia Lockwood, Misty Copeland, John Grisham, and Kate Baer. 

New translation shares the voice of a poet who wrote as intensely as she lived

New translation shares the voice of a poet who wrote as intensely as she lived

Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen took her own life in 1976. A newly translated version of her three-part memoir traces the sometimes amusing, sometimes painful turns of her unconventional life.
by John Powers

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Author digs into family's 'Smalltime' mob operation, finds family secrets

Author digs into family's 'Smalltime' mob operation, finds family secrets

Russell Shorto's grandfather was a mob boss in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa. Shorto writes about the family havoc that resulted from his grandfather's operation in his new memoir, “Smalltime.”
by Dave Davies

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'Finding My Voice': Hibbing native's YA novel reissue connects with new generation of readers

'Finding My Voice': Hibbing native's YA novel reissue connects with new generation of readers

One of the first Asian American young adult novels, “Finding My Voice,” is getting a third run this year since its first publication in 1992. But, the messages about racism, identity and family continue to resonate with readers who remember picking up the book years ago.
by Hannah Yang

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'Halfway Home' makes case that the formerly incarcerated are never truly free

'Halfway Home' makes case that the formerly incarcerated are never truly free

Sociologist, criminologist, and former jail chaplain Reuben Jonathan Miller says "no other marginalized group ... experience[s] [the] profound level of legal exclusion" that those once imprisoned do.
by Ericka Taylor

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'We Came, We Saw, We Left' takes us on one family's gap year adventure

'We Came, We Saw, We Left' takes us on one family's gap year adventure

Dartmouth's Charles Wheelan, author of “Naked Economics,” writes about his nine-month globetrot in 2016 with his wife and their teenagers — offering a refreshing escape during these isolating times.
by Carson Vaughan

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Actor and author Ethan Hawke: Writing 'Forces You To Think Through Things'

Actor and author Ethan Hawke: Writing 'Forces You To Think Through Things'

Hawke's latest novel is called “A Bright Ray of Darkness.” It's about a famous young actor in a crumbling marriage who immerses himself in a Broadway production of Shakespeare's Henry IV.
by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

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