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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.

Neil Gaiman's fictional take on family life

Comic book author and novelist Neil Gaiman has a new book combining family politics and the supernatural. It picks up some of the characters from his bestselling work, "American Gods".

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Memorable book: "The Things They Carried"

A classic of modern and Vietnam literature, "The Things They Carried" challenges the meaning of truth in war. Midmorning listeners weigh in with what the book means to them.

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Carl Hiaasen's mysteries of Florida

Florida's scammers and eccentrics populate his fiction. Author Carl Hiaasen talks about why such characters also appear in his books for children.

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Ruminator Magazine to cease publication

The St. Paul-based arts journal Ruminator Magazine is going out of business. The magazine began life as the Hungry Mind Review, an offshoot of the Hungry Mind bookstore. In recent months it had shifted from a literary magazine to a publication that covered a broader spectrum of the arts. Editor Susannah McNeely told MPR's Euan Kerr things actually seemed to be going really well.
by Euan Kerr

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Louise Erdrich explores the strength of family ties in 'The Painted Drum'

The stories of a New Hampshire woman, an Ojibwe Indian and a Native American drum are intertwined in Minnesota author Louise Erdrich's new novel, "The Painted Drum."

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Author Kate DiCamillo's new heroine is a pig named Mercy

Mercy Watson is a pig with a passion for buttered toast. She's also the main character in "Mercy Watson to the Rescue," a new book from Minneapolis children's author Kate DiCamillo.

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Author Bobbie Ann Mason creates an 'Atomic Romance'

Noted author Bobbie Ann Mason's new novel, the first in a decade, is both a return to familiar country and a departure from her earlier books. "An Atomic Romance" is a love story set against a backdrop of the Cold War.

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Twin Cities Album: A Visual History

Through photographs and commentary, author Dave Kenney offers a virtual tour through 150 years of events in the book, "Twin Cities Album, A Visual History." Take a Flash tour of the book -- and history -- with Kenney and MPR Morning Edition host Cathy Wurzer.

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Letters from war

A historian gathers letters from the fronts of the Revolutionary War through World War II in a new book.

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Studs Terkel's conversations about music

In 1964, legendary radio host and oral historian Studs Terkel brought a young, virtually unknown songwriter from Hibbing into the studios at WFMT Chicago. That interview with a young Bob Dylan is one of dozens he has transcribed into a collection of conversations about music. Terkel says the book's title, "And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey," comes from an interview with conductor Leonard Bernstein. He talked with MPR's Tom Crann.
by Tom Crann

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