The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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

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Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Sam Stroozas rounds up local events and Minnesota book news you may have missed.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where host Emily Bright 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 and produced by Kelly Gordon every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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.

Ask a Bookseller: Part memoir, part home redecorating saga
The book Sandy Koropp of Prairie Path Books in Wheaton, Ill., is "crazy about right now" is part memoir, part home redecorating saga.
How Black players propelled Cleveland's baseball team to win the 1948 World Series
In 1948, Cleveland's baseball team won the World Series. It wouldn't have made it without the team's first two Black players, and the team owner's willingness to hire them, says author Luke Epplin.
Children's author Beverly Cleary, creator of Ramona Quimby, dies at 104
Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children’s author whose memories of her Oregon childhood were shared with millions through the likes of Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died at age 104.
Talking Volumes: A conversation with author Chang-rae Lee
Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Chang-rae Lee’s past works have incorporated issues of race, class and immigration in the United States. MPR News guest host Brandt Williams interviewed Lee as part of Minnesota Public Radio and the Star Tribune’s Talking Volumes: Talking Race series.
When your fad diet fails, and it probably will, 'Just Eat'
Diets often fail in the long term because they're too strict or require unnatural eating habits. In a new book, Barry Estabrook turns to science and history to find a weight-loss regimen that works.
There are 45,000 laws, policies and administrative sanctions in the U.S. that target people with criminal records. Reuben Jonathan Miller researches how they affect people's lives in Halfway Home.
Farcical 'Life Of The Mind' skewers academic life and adjunct 'hell'
A graduate student is teaching four courses while also trying to finish a dissertation. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Christine Smallwood's new novel one of the wittiest she's read in a long time.
With 'Fierce Poise,' Helen Frankenthaler poured beauty onto canvas
Abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler poured pools of highly diluted pigments onto her raw canvases. Biographer Alexander Nemerov says her paintings are "about feeling the world."