The Thread® - Books and Literary News

The Thread from MPR 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.

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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 back for its 25th season. Join us at the Fitzgerald Theater for four special events with renowned authors, celebrating our anniversary with a special $25 ticket price for MPR members and Star Tribune subscribers. Buy tickets here.

You don't have to be a complete nerd to love this novel ... but it helps
Carrie Vaughn is a veteran science fiction and fantasy author who puts her years in the scene to good use in this rollicking tale about a high-tech fantasy theme park (think “Westworld”) gone wrong.
A woman is committed to an asylum for thinking in 'The Woman They Could Not Silence'
In a new book, “The Radium Girls” author Kate Moore follows the struggles of Elizabeth Packard who, locked up by her husband in 1860 for having opinions and voicing them, finds she's not the only one.
From poverty to Stanford, memoir tells a physicist's remarkable tale
“A Quantum Life” is an important book to help understand the institutional hurdles that have kept science mostly white and male — and how the fire of inquiry can take root in a heart and lift it up.
Ibram X. Kendi recommends 6 books to help your kids understand race
Ibram X. Kendi has been reading a lot of books about "the human rainbow" to his daughter — so we asked him to recommend some books kids can read to gain a better understanding of race in America.