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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.

Confronting the possibility of monsters in 'The Essex Serpent'

Confronting the possibility of monsters in 'The Essex Serpent'

The clash between science and religious belief lies at the heart of Sarah Perry's new novel, set in a marshy, windswept English town menaced by a serpentine monster that may or may not truly exist.
by Ari Shapiro

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'So Much Blue' is Percival Everett's best yet

'So Much Blue' is Percival Everett's best yet

By turns funny, shocking and heartbreaking, Everett's new novel follows a painter who's deeply ambivalent about his apparently idyllic life and digs into the moments in his past that shaped him.
by Michael Schaub

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After years of restraint, a linguist says 'yes!' to the exclamation point

After years of restraint, a linguist says 'yes!' to the exclamation point

F. Scott Fitzgerald once declared that using an exclamation point was like laughing at your own joke, but linguist Geoff Nunberg begs to differ. He has begun embracing the mark in his own writing.
by Geoff Nunberg

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Tracy K. Smith named new U.S. poet laureate

Tracy K. Smith named new U.S. poet laureate

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet says she plans to use her new role to meet people who don't read poetry ... yet, anyway. She believes poetry can be a resource for people in fraught or isolating times.

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In new novel, 'Ove' author takes on hockey-town culture

In new novel, 'Ove' author takes on hockey-town culture

"Beartown" ponders "the things that we let successful people get away with, just because they are important to us."
by Euan Kerr

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Southern cooking: 'People of color didn't get the respect they earned'

Southern cooking: 'People of color didn't get the respect they earned'

In his new book, John T. Edge writes that food plays a central role in Southern identity, but African-American and immigrant cooks have often been left out of the stories the South tells about itself.
by Maria Godoy

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Prog rock gets some respect in 'The Show That Never Ends'

Prog rock gets some respect in 'The Show That Never Ends'

David Weigel is primarily a political reporter, but in "The Show that Never Ends" he spins his love of prog rock into a detailed, affectionate history of a genre that's never completely gone away.
by Jason Heller

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'Last Kid Left' is a summer read for people who hate the light

'Last Kid Left' is a summer read for people who hate the light

Rosecrans Baldwin's new novel probably shouldn't have come out in summer: It's got the trappings of a beach read -- a shore town, tourists, a murder -- but it strays into some very dark territory.
by Jason Sheehan

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What makes a good whodunit? 'Magpie Murders' author spells it out

What makes a good whodunit? 'Magpie Murders' author spells it out

Anthony Horowitz's latest novel is a whodunit about whodunits. He says, "I wanted it to be ... a sort of a treatise on the whole genre of murder mystery writing."
by Lynn Neary

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