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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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

Ask a Bookseller

Ask a Bookseller is a weekly series where The Thread 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 every Friday at 11 a.m., featuring conversations about books and other literary ideas. Listen to Big Books and Bold Ideas here.

Sign Up for The Thread® Newsletter

Sign up for The Thread newsletter to get reading recommendations from Kerri Miller and other bookworms around the MPR newsroom. Find reviews for new releases, as well as hidden gems you may have missed.

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. 

The journey from concubine to empress

The most hated woman in China was its last empress. Host and Talking Volumes producer Heather McElhatton interviews Anchee Min about her book Empress Orchid. The author talks about re-imagining the Ching Dynasty court and the women who rose to power amid intrigue and murder. The conversation was recorded at the Fitzgerald Theater on April 20.

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The softer side of Genghis Khan

A new book explores Genghis Khan's civic side. A Macalester College professor's best-seller maintains the feared Mongol invader instituted many reforms that were well ahead of the times.

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A conversation wtih author Sandra Benitez

Sandra Benitez writes of bi-culturalism and the search for a long-lost brother in her latest novel. It's the story of a Minneapolis woman exploring lessons of healing embedded in rural Mexican traditions.

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A reporter goes on a worldwide learning spree

A journalist throws herself into travel and learning how to be a chef, a trainer of border collies and a geisha.

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Themes and Threads in Anchee Min's 'Empress Orchid'

Anchee Min's new novel, "Empress Orchid," is a wordsmith's treasury of unique phrases, economical dialogue, and rich imagery.

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A Talking Volumes interview: "Empress Orchid"

The most hated woman in China was its last empress. The next in the Talking Volumes series is based on a true story of palace intrigue and murder, re-imagined by author Anchee Min.

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Foreign Wife Elegy

Her husband's daily view of life and death as a nurse inspired a poet's precise observations of how those experiences look and feel.

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Shannon Olson on Talking Volumes

A recorded broadcast of a Talking Volumes conversation. Greta Cunningham interviews Shannon Olson, author of Children of God Go Bowling.

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The odd allure of Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss' first book was published in 1958. What was fresh and different back then remains so for the children of those first children to read books like The Cat in the Hat.

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The Birth of Venus

British writer Sarah Dunant's new novel opens with a scandalous discovery in 15th-century Italy. Two nuns preparing the body of Sister Lucretzia for burial, find a beautifully ornate tattoo of a snake slithering down her torso. The book tells how that tattoo got there. It's the story of nun as a young woman growing up in Florence at the birth of the Renaissance, experiencing the excitement and the terrors of the time.

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