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The Thread from MPR News

Weekly series: Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is 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.

Weekly series: 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 here.

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In Dakota County, public libraries rethink their role to meet needs beyond books
Minnesota libraries still hold books and host story time, but they’re also trying to meet new public demands for digital titles, remote worker space, Wi-Fi and social services. In Dakota County, officials are remaking their library system in real time.
A new novel about a ‘sandwich’ generation explores middle age and senior synchronized swimming
St. Paul author Sarah C. Johns’ debut novel features three generations of women with a unique family history, and the stars of the show are in their late 50s and and 70s. And they’re working together to ready a team for a senior synchronized swimming competition.
The shadow fighters of the Civil War
Historian Patrick O’Donnell spotted an intriguing roadside marker and then spent six years researching a part of the Civil War long forgotten. His new book, “The Unvanquished,” tells the story shape-shifting spies, fearless guerilla fighters and military leaders straight out of a movie.
A San Francisco store is shipping LGBTQ+ books to places where they are banned
In what she calls "Books Not Bans," Becka Robbins sends titles to groups that want them in the face of a movement by conservative advocacy groups and lawmakers to ban them from schools and libraries.
4 crime and suspense novels make for hot summer reading
There’s something about the shadowy moral recesses of crime and suspense fiction that makes those genres especially appealing as temperatures soar. Here are four novels that turn the heat up.
Minnesota author Tai Coleman on families, hope and surviving America while Black
Poet and writer Taiyon Coleman’s new essay collection, “Traveling without Moving,” is a personal take on what it’s like to be a Black woman in today’s America.
The high cost of medical whistleblowing
MPR News guest host Euan Kerr talks with University of Minnesota bioethicist Carl Elliott about his new book, “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No.”