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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.

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 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.

Anatoly Liberman on the origins of English idioms

Anatoly Liberman on the origins of English idioms

Some idioms need no explanation. Sayings like “put it on the back burner” or “don’t rain on my parade” follow common sense. But what about phrases like “drink like a fish” or “by hook or by crook”?
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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After cancer diagnosis, a neurosurgeon sees life, death and his career in a new way

After cancer diagnosis, a neurosurgeon sees life, death and his career in a new way

Dr. Henry Marsh felt comfortable in hospitals — until he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. "I was much less self-assured now that I was a patient myself," he says. His book is And Finally.
by Terry Gross

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Clint Smith on how to reckon with slavery as America's original sin

Clint Smith on how to reckon with slavery as America's original sin

Clint Smith’s acclaimed book, “How the Word Is Passed,” is now out in paperback. In it, he examines how slavery has been central in shaping our country’s collective history, and ourselves.
by Kelly Gordon

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From the archives: Naima Coster on her novel 'What's Mine and Yours'

From the archives: Naima Coster on her novel 'What's Mine and Yours'

This Friday, Big Books and Bold Ideas will feature Clint Smith, celebrated author of “How the Word is Passed,” which powerfully examines the legacy of slavery in America. Kerri Miller’s conversation with Naima Coster in 2021 trod a similar path, only Coster used a fiction lens to look at effects of segregation in her novel, “What’s Mine and Yours.”
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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'Brotherless Night' explores a young Sri Lankan Tamil woman's life, love and idealism set against civil war

'Brotherless Night' explores a young Sri Lankan Tamil woman's life, love and idealism set against civil war

Twin Cities writer V.V. Ganeshananthan didn’t expect her second novel to take so long to write. But after almost two decades “Brotherless Night,” a tale set against the Sri Lankan civil war, is drawing critical acclaim. It’s a depiction of a determined young Tamil woman struggling with life, love and family even as her country descends into chaos.
by Euan Kerr

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Ask a Bookseller: LA crime fiction at its best 

Ask a Bookseller: LA crime fiction at its best 

Patrick Millikin is a bookseller at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, which specializes in mysteries, and the crime novel he’s been waiting for finally hit the shelves this month. It’s “Everybody Knows” by Edgar-award winning author Jordan Harper. 
by Emily Bright

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