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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread® is your source for book recommendations and other literary news.

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Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Sam Stroozas rounds up local events and Minnesota book news you may have missed.

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where host Emily Bright 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 and produced by Kelly Gordon every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

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.

A West African fantasy with enveloping world-building

A West African fantasy with enveloping world-building

This week, bookseller Linda Stack-Nelson of Wild Rumpus Books for Young Readers in Minneapolis recommended the debut young adult novel “Raybearer” by Nigerian-American author Jordan Ifueko. 
by Emily Bright

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In 'On All Fronts,' CNN's Clarissa Ward showcases gravity, costs of a reporting life

In 'On All Fronts,' CNN's Clarissa Ward showcases gravity, costs of a reporting life

Ward says she didn't know as a journalist she would "have my heart broken in a hundred different ways, that I would lose friends and watch children die and grow to feel like an alien in my own skin."
by Annalisa Quinn

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Jacqueline Woodson wants kids to know the beauty — and the danger — of football

Jacqueline Woodson wants kids to know the beauty — and the danger — of football

Woodson's new novel in verse “Before the Ever After” follows a 12-year-old boy whose football star father is beginning to show the damaging effects of too many blows to the head.
by Sacha Pfeiffer

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Author traces what happened to WWII's 'Last Million' displaced people

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of the concentration camp survivors, POWs and other displaced people who remained in Germany following the war. Many had no home to return to.
by Dave Davies

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Woodward defends decision to withhold Trump's virus comments

Woodward defends decision to withhold Trump's virus comments

Bob Woodward says he needed time to be sure that President Donald Trump's private comments from February were accurate. On Twitter and elsewhere online, commentators accused Woodward of valuing book sales over public health.
by The Associated Press

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Author Yaa Gyasi says writing can be 'an act of love and justice'

Author Yaa Gyasi says writing can be 'an act of love and justice'

Gyasi's debut novel, “Homegoing,” won a PEN/Hemingway Award. Her follow-up, “Transcendent Kingdom,” draws on Gyasi's life as the daughter of immigrants from Ghana.
by Terry Gross

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Trump fired a 'faux-Bama,' Michael Cohen says in tell-all memoir

Trump fired a 'faux-Bama,' Michael Cohen says in tell-all memoir

In his book “Disloyal: A Memoir,” President Donald Trump's former personal attorney catalogs a laundry list of accusations, ranging from racism and sexual misconduct to financial misdeeds.
by Anastasia Tsioulcas

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Often, it's not what you say, but 'how you say it'

Psychology professor Katherine Kinzler's new book looks at how people sound when they talk — and how that affects the way they're perceived. She says even children form biases around language use.
by Audie Cornish

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'World Of Wonders' urges us to take a breath and look around

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil's new book aims to show readers how the natural world can support, educate and inspire us; it's inspired by her peripatetic childhood and the plants and animals she loved.
by Rachel Martin

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