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.

Michael Harriot's 'Black AF History' could hardly come at a better time
This engaging, well-researched, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny history places the Black experience at center stage with stories that should have already been part of our collective memory.
A sold-out crowd welcomed Dr. Abraham Verghese to the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater for the kick-off of the 2023 Talking Volumes series.
'Just Breathe' honors stories of health care workers in one hospital's COVID-19 unit
Nurse Lisa Kilgard and her colleagues wrote a book to help people remember what the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was like for health care providers on the front lines.
'Wellness' is a perfect novel for our age, its profound sadness tempered with humor
Nathan Hill's stunning new novel about the stories we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time, is both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page.
'The Care and Keeping of You,' American Girl's guide to puberty, turns 25
“The Care and Keeping of You” from American Girl eased the adolescent anxieties of the millennial and Gen Z girls who read it. Now the book is marking its 25th anniversary.
Ask a Bookseller: 'Bathe the Cat'
This week's book is a “phenomenal read-aloud,” according to Jessica Palacios of Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, Calif.
Healing from trauma in the northern Wisconsin woods
Novelist Carol Dunbar set “A Winter’s Rime” in rural Wisconsin so her main character can both howl and heal the generational trauma that has shaped her life.