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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.

The life and death of the prairie

The largest ecosystem in North America also is the most altered. A new book chronicles the changes human beings have brought to the surprisingly fragile prairie.

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What are you reading this winter?

Author Nancy Pearl shares book suggestions for gifts and reading on these long winter nights.

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A conversation with author Russell Banks

Writer Russell Banks explores the clash of ideology and racism in his latest novel The Darling. Banks joins Midmorning host Kerri Miller for Talking Volumes recorded at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.

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The man who lit 'Chango's Fire'

Julio Santana is an arsonist. He's the hero of Ernesto Quinonez's new novel "Chango's Fire." Julio burns down buildings in New York's Spanish Harlem neighborhood. He gets his money from the building's owners, who cash in their insurance. His criminal activities aside, Julio is a community-minded kind of guy. He's good to his family and friends, and spends a lot of time fixing up his own place. Quinonez says "Chango's Fire" is a protest novel of a kind, pointing out the downside to gentrification.

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A conversation with writer Susan Orlean

Writer Susan Orlean's new book takes readers everywhere from a Little League field in Cuba to the World Taxidermy Championships in Illinois.

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Author Erin Hart brings us back to the bogs

Minnesota writer Erin Hart's new novel, "Lake of Sorrows," brings fans of her first book back to familiar territory -- the mystical world of Ireland's bogs. In fact, the first scene in the book describes a man being swallowed alive by a bog.

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Barry Lopez talks "Resistance."

Writer Barry Lopez says he has never thought of himself as political. He won the National Book Award for "Arctic Dreams" and critical acclaim his fable "Crow and Weasel." But now he says he's distressed about the state of American democracy, and how most people seem disengaged. His new book "Resistance" tells 9 fictional stories of people who decide to work for change.

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Talking Volumes author Russell Banks

The terrifying events of Liberia's civil war and their effects on an idealistic white American woman are at the center of author Russell Banks' latest novel, "The Darling."

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