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The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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

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. 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.

Stories of families and distance

Author and Minnesotan Valerie Miner writes of the simple joys of travel and transcendence of relationships in her new collection of short stories.

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A conversation with author Joyce Carol Oates

The opening Talking Volumes interview is with best-selling author Joyce Carol Oates. She talks with host Kerri Miller about her most recent novel, which explores a family tragedy. The story is set near Niagara Falls.

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'The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew'

Minneapolis writer Neal Karlen describes himself as a shanda—a scandal. He grew up Jewish, in a devout Twin Cities family, but he eventually turned away from rabbinical study and drifted afield of his heritage. In his new book "Shanda" he explains how he tried to make people like him by telling jokes laden with offensive stereotypes, and how a chance friendship brought him back to a more meaningful existence.

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Prescriptions from a country doctor

For almost four decades, Roger MacDonald was a traveling doctor in one of the most remote regions of northern Minnesota. He made his way from fishing villages to Indian reservations, treating the independent and idiosyncratic individuals who relied on him for medical help.

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New book on Duluth lynching of a Finnish dockworker

It's safe to say that, until a new book was released this week, not many Minnesotans knew of a lynching in Duluth's history. "Suomalaiset: People of the Marsh" looks at the death of a Finnish dockworker, whose body was found swinging from a tree in Duluth's Lester Park. Was the death a suicide or murder? It is a question that author Mark Munger tries to answer.

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As luck would have it

Americans are thought to work hard, but playing games of chance is also a large part of life in the United States. One historian says the two different schools of thought are interdependent.

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A life of travel

It sounds like the ideal job to those of us bound to our desks. Travel editor and writer Catherine Watson looks back on her career in newspaper writing and takes your questions about travel.

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Examining a character through the lens of family history

Bharati Mukherjee's "The Tree Bride" continues the story of Tara Chatterjee—by looking backward at her ancestors' interaction with British colonialists. Mukherjee told Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr she knew she had to write the story when she finished the final scene of her earlier book, "Desireable Daughters."

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Defining the American dream

Much is made in this election year about the American dream, but what has that dream meant to people over the decades?

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China Mieville creates monsters with 'Iron Council'

British fantasy author China Miéville is known both for his books and his political activism. He's written a series of novels where magic and Victorian technology prevail. His latest novel sets a group of renegade railway workers against a corrupt city state.

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