The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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

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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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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.

July 23, 2019 9:00 AM

'Gods of Jade and Shadow' spins a dark, dazzling fairy tale

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novel is set in an alternate Jazz Age Mexico, where gods and monsters from Mayan mythology walk the Earth and war with each other for dominion over Xibalba, the land of death.

by Arkady Martine

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July 22, 2019 7:07 PM

In 'Beijing Payback,' the immigrant experience, but make it a crime thriller

Daniel Nieh used to be a model and a translator. He says both of those professions went into his debut novel, a page-turner about a college basketball player unraveling his Chinese father's murder.

by Ari Shapiro

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July 21, 2019 9:00 AM

In 'My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant', the heroine is no flake

Laura Dockrill's young adult novel stars a refreshingly direct, unapologetic — and occasionally crass — plus-sized girl who uses her doctor-imposed food diary to record her life and feelings.

by Alethea Kontis

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July 21, 2019 8:08 AM

'At Dusk' exposes South Korea through a variety of lenses

Hwang Sok-yong's novel is a perfect slice of Koreana; a touching, somewhat depressive narrative full of nostalgia exposing the underbelly of a nation via the people inhabiting society's bottom rung.

by Gabino Iglesias

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July 20, 2019 9:00 AM

Spirited 'Family of Origin' defends the maligned millennial

CJ Hauser's new novel centers on two estranged siblings trying to unravel their late father's work with a group of fringe biologists who believe evolution is running backward, away from millenials.

by Lily Meyer

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July 19, 2019 1:29 PM

An imagined future speaks in 'Talking to Robots'

If you want to see what that future might look like, David Ewing Duncan's book is a fun place to start; he envisions various bots based on interviews with scientists and engineers, among others.

by Adam Frank

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July 19, 2019 11:59 AM

Constantinople; Michelangelo; Elephants

Bookseller Matt Keliher recommends a short summer read by one of France's greatest living writers.

by Tracy Mumford

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July 18, 2019 6:00 AM

34 ways to beat the system in 'Raised in Captivity'

Chuck Klosterman's new collection of "fictional nonfiction" is full of people who subvert expectations and find ways around the systems that rule our lives. Also, there's a puma in an airplane toilet.

by Jason Sheehan

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July 18, 2019 2:37 AM

Rooted in history, 'The Nickel Boys' is a great American novel

Colson Whitehead's deeply affecting new novel is based on the true story of a segregated reform school in Florida where African American boys were brutalized and possibly murdered.

by Maureen Corrigan

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July 18, 2019 2:01 AM

Letters serve to bond time-traveling rivals in 'This Is How You Lose the Time War'

Rather than the time travel or war, the thrill of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's book becomes the connection between two lonely professional killers with the ability to inscribe letters on lava.

by Jason Sheehan

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