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. 

This year's National Book Awards — announced in a first-ever virtual streaming ceremony — went mostly to writers of color, as the foundation that gives the prizes vowed to be more inclusive.
Lin Enger's new novel delves into truth, lies and the apocalypse
Lin Enger says his own obsession with the rapture developed over the years, as did a story he first set out to write three decades ago. “American Gospel” is set in the 1970s but has an eerie ring of today.
In 'Fevers, Feuds And Diamonds,' Paul Farmer breaks down assumptions about Ebola
The anthropologist and physician teaches that the world needs not only medicine, but something more — a rejection of global racial inequalities and serious investment in the care of all people.
Obama calls Trump's refusal to concede another 'breach of basic democratic norms'
In an interview with NPR, the former president offers some of his most wide-ranging remarks on the outcome of the election and says Donald Trump will fail in "denying reality."
Light punctures the darkness in 'One Night Two Souls Went Walking'
Ellen Cooney's new novel follows an unnamed hospital chaplain on her rounds, as she ministers to patients and grapples with her own internal questions. It's a quiet, inward-looking but hopeful story.
Ask a Bookseller: 'A heaping helping of joy'
Dionne Sims, owner of the new pop-up store Black Garnet Books in Minneapolis, recommended a book that’s been bringing her joy lately: "#Very Fat #Very Brave” by comedian Nicole Byer.