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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.

Tom Hanks is obsessed with typewriters (so he wrote a book about them)

Tom Hanks is obsessed with typewriters (so he wrote a book about them)

The actor's new collection of short fiction -- his debut book as an author -- is called "Uncommon Type," and each story has something to do with the machine close to his heart.
by David Greene

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Aspen Ideas Festival: The creative genius of Leonardo da Vinci

Aspen Ideas Festival: The creative genius of Leonardo da Vinci

Best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson has written a new book about a man who he says takes the cake as the "world's most creative genius": Leonardo da Vinci. He says "we can't be Newton. We can't be Einstein. But we can try to be more like Leonardo."
by MPR News Staff

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'Lady Killers:' Cherchez la femme fatale

'Lady Killers:' Cherchez la femme fatale

An FBI investigator once famously said "There are no female serial killers," but Tori Telfer sets out to prove him wrong with this gruesome new account of multiply-murderous women throughout history.
by Jean Zimmerman

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Exclusive first read: Philip Pullman's 'The Book Of Dust'

Exclusive first read: Philip Pullman's 'The Book Of Dust'

Philip Pullman returns to the world of his beloved Dark Materials trilogy in "The Book of Dust." We have an exclusive first peek at young protagonist Malcolm, his canoe, and the day his life changes.
by Petra Mayer

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How living in a library gave one man 'the thirst of learning'

How living in a library gave one man 'the thirst of learning'

Ronald Clark's father was a live-in custodian at a New York City library. Clark tells his daughter about growing up surrounded by stacks of books -- and how that shaped the man he would become.
by Heidi Glenn and Liyna Anwar

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Electrifying 'Power' flips the gender script to unsettling effect

Electrifying 'Power' flips the gender script to unsettling effect

For most of recorded history, men have held power over women. Naomi Alderman's new novel imagines a world where women suddenly have power -- actual electrical power -- to oppress, hurt and kill men.
by Michael Schaub

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Chris Jackson and the book industry's attempts to diversify

Chris Jackson and the book industry's attempts to diversify

Chris Jackson is revitalizing One World, a division of Random House known for publishing black authors. To celebrate, it's releasing Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, "We Were Eight Years in Power."
by Lynn Neary

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'The Apparitionists' raises the specters that haunted America

'The Apparitionists' raises the specters that haunted America

Peter Manseau skillfully weaves together spirituality, technology and the legacy of the Civil War to tell the story of a "spirit photographer" on trial for claiming he could take pictures of ghosts.
by Genevieve Valentine

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In 'This Blessed Earth,' the outdated romance of the family farm

In 'This Blessed Earth,' the outdated romance of the family farm

Journalist Ted Genoways spent a year on a small farm in rural Nebraska, and he says American nostalgia for the family farm overlooks the pressures farmers face and the realities of food production.
by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

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