The Thread® - Books and Literary 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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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. 

Talking Volumes: A conversation with Sarah Broom
Kerri Miller hosts a conversation with award-winning author Sarah Broom about her book “The Yellow House.”
'Flamer' offers real hope — not just rainbows — to queer kids
Mike Curato's new young adult graphic novel “Flamer” follows a teenager struggling with self-hate and all the different parts of his identity — being a Catholic, a Boy Scout, and being gay.
'Dark Archives' explores the use of human skin in bookbinding
Megan Rosenbloom tells readers an adventurous tale of how her morbid curiosity brought her across an ocean to investigate the origins, motivations and techniques behind this macabre practice.
History and hatred drive the horror in 'Ring Shout'
P. Djèlí Clark's new novella is set in an alternate Jim Crow America where the Ku Klux Klan contains actual pointy-headed white demons, and “The Birth Of a Nation” is not just a film but an incantation.
Real-world experience gives 'The Nightworkers' its punch
Brian Selfon spent years working in the criminal justice field, and he brings that knowledge to bear in his debut, about a family of money launderers whose lives are upended when a bag goes missing.
Kao Kalia Yang started out writing her family’s refugee memoir. Now she’s sharing the journeys of others
The Minnesota author's new book, "Somewhere in the Unknown World," began when she collected her uncle’s story about fleeing Laos. Then she spoke to a Liberian hospital worker, a Karen parent from school, a Jewish singer from Ukraine — and created “a collective refugee memoir.”
'Where The Wild Ladies Are' is perfect Halloween reading
Aoko Matsuda's gently supernatural story collection — all about women who are something more than they seem — gets its unearthly feel not from jump scares, but from the quality of the writing.
Sixty years on, an NBA story teaches about racial injustice
The Minneapolis Laker’s Elgin Baylor’s high-flying style of basketball energized the early NBA, but it was his appearance courtside in a suit that changed the league. Now that story is being told in a children’s book.