The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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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.

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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.

August 30, 2019 11:00 PM

'Palestine + 100' explores contested territory, past and future

A new anthology invites Palestinian writers to imagine their homeland in 2048 — 100 years after the creation of Israel. The stories are inventive, dextrous, painful, and even sometimes playful.

by Amal El-Mohtar

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August 30, 2019 2:07 PM

If you love Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead and Toni Morrison

Bookseller Nialle Sylvan says that Rivers Solomon’s novel earns comparisons to some of the biggest names in literature.

by Tracy Mumford

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August 29, 2019 9:00 AM

Coming to terms with loss and grief in the gorgeous 'Everything Inside'

Edwidge Danticat's new story collection explores the ways people deal with death, from a woman whose barely known father is dying to a man facing his last seconds as he falls from a construction site.

by Michael Schaub

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August 29, 2019 6:53 AM

Telepathy and surveillance converge in 'Overthrow'

Caleb Crain's perceptive novel examines the ways we're all under surveillance by corporations and computers, every move and click tracked, and the ways that intersects with how we watch each other.

by Annalisa Quinn

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August 28, 2019 8:58 AM

In 'Midwestern Strange,' a tour of the utterly bizarre and all-too-human

B.J. Hollars' book is both a quirky primer on some of the Midwest's oddest stories — and a fresh perspective on small-town culture.

by Carson Vaughan

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August 25, 2019 9:00 AM

'The Warehouse' is scary because it's plausible

Rob Hart's new dystopian cyberthriller imagines a near-future America in a state of semi-collapse, where the only jobs available are in company towns built by an enormous conglomerate called Cloud.

by Gabino Iglesias

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August 25, 2019 7:46 AM

'My Papi has a Motorcycle' pays loving tribute to a California childhood

Author Isabel Quintero and illustrator Zeke Peña worked together on My Papi Has a Motorcycle, a homage to Quintero's childhood in California's Inland Empire, and to her hard-working father.

by Leila Fadel and Samantha Balaban

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August 25, 2019 6:00 AM

'The Downstairs Girl' faces difficult history with joy and style

In Stacey Lee's new novel, an opinionated and talented Chinese American girl makes her way in Reconstruction-era Atlanta while preserving her secret work as an advice columnist in the local paper.

by Caitlyn Paxson

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August 24, 2019 6:00 AM

In 'Automatic Eve,' steampunk meets 'Blade Runner' — in Japan

Rokuro Inui's mosaic novel is set in a lush alternate Japan, full of cricket fighting tournaments, beautiful automata and intricate webs of plot and counter-plot around the mysterious Eve.

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia