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. 

St. Paul teen named one of 5 National Student Poets
Madelyn Dietz and the other winners will each receive a $5,000 cash award. The student poet program was launched in 2011, with winners contributing to community programs and poetry events and performing their work everywhere from Lincoln Center to the White House.
It's more than racism: Isabel Wilkerson explains America's 'caste' system
In “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the laws and practices that created a bipolar caste system in the U.S. — and how the Nazis borrowed from it.
Author ventures into the Russian wilds to save a magnificent owl
Ornithologist and writer Jonathan Slaght spent several frigid winters camping in the forests of the Russian Far East. He was there to study the biggest owl in the world, which survived by eating fish snatched out of holes in the river ice.
'Into the Wild' bus likely lands a home at Alaska museum
The abandoned bus featured in the book and movie “Into the Wild” appears headed to a new home at a museum in Fairbanks, after being removed from Alaska’s backcountry to deter people from making dangerous, sometimes deadly treks to visit the site.
A mean ghost story and a souped-up crime novel will wise you up fast
“The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die,” by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, centers on an Indian family haunted by a jealous ghost. And S. A. Cosby's “Blacktop Wasteland” is a noir thriller — with muscle cars.