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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 Company You Keep

In the 1960s, as opposition to the Vietnam war intensified, a few radicals decided peaceful protest was not enough. They organized and coordinated violent acts, including bank robberies and bombings, against "the establishment." The group's name, the Weather Underground, was inspired by a line in a Bob Dylan song. Some members took on new identities and disappeared. They became adept at avoiding the authorities, in some cases for decades. But one-by-one they resurfaced to face legal charges and attempt to reconnect with lives and families they had avoided for years. Several such figures appear in Neil Gordon's new novel "The Company You Keep."

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Conversion conversations

A writer pursues a spiritual life that crosses both Judaism and Christianity. In the process, she explores what it means to convert.

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The universe and you

Is there a link between the scientific exploration of the universe and our earth-bound lives? A science journalist seeks connections between distant wonders and everyday events.

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Adapting and living

Blindness, raising a developmentally disabled child and the more common characteristics of a life form a new, sharply-observed memoir.

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Summer reading list

Summer is a time for reading an escapist novel or catching up with books you've always meant to read but haven't had time. Some recommendations of new and older books to read on the porch, on the airplane and in the sun.

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Eat Cake

Jeanne Ray became a novelist late in life, but she has published three books in the last five years. Not that she hasn't had writing in her life: her daughter is acclaimed author Ann Patchett. Ray claims she isn't very creative, and just writes about things she knows. She knows a lot about cake. Her latest novel is about a family which finds salvation through cake.

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Dads read

We talk with a children's author who says he doesn't see enough fathers reading to their children. His latest book is about a father and daughter team who work together to grow a batch of potatoes. In advance of Father's Day we'll look at how dad's can connect with their kids through books - and gardening!

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Erica Jong

Erica Jong talks about her new novel, set in ancient Greece and inspired by the woman considered to be one of the world's great poets.

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Getting Mother's Body

Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is now a novelist. Set in 1963, Parks' novel "Getting Mother's Body" tells the story of Billy Beede, a 16-year-old pregnant orphan living with her aunt and uncle in West Texas. Legend has it her mother was buried in Arizona with enough jewelry to solve everyone's financial problems. Some of Billy's relatives want to go get the treasure, but she's not so sure.

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Revealed family histories

A rebroadcast of Katherine Lanpher's conversation with author Jonathan Safran Foer, whose debut novel lit up the book world last year.

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