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.

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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. 

'Doctors Blackwell' tells the story of 2 pioneering sisters who changed medicine
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in America to earn her medical degree. Her sister Emily followed in her footsteps. Janice Nimura tells the story of the "complicated, prickly" trailblazers.
'Aftershocks' is a powerful memoir of a life upended — then pieced back together
When Nadia Owusu was 4 years old, her Armenian American mother disappeared from her life. When she was 13, her Ghanaian father died. Owusu reflects the losses and her biracial identity in her memoir.
Ask a bookseller: 'The Magical Language of Others' gives a compassionate look at mother-daughter relationships
Amanda Toronto of Word Bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., says she can’t stop thinking about a memoir she read recently: “The Magical Language of Others” by poet and translator E.J. Koh. 
Trying to survive on the margins in 'At the Edge of the Haight'
Katherine Seligman's new novel makes alive and visible the lives of people we often walk past. It's the story of a young woman surviving on the streets of San Francisco with a few friends and her dog.
From denial to obstruction: New book charts changing tactics of the fossil fuel lobby
Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann looks at the tactics fossil fuel interests are using to obstruct broad policy shifts that are our surest bet to “take back our planet.”