The Thread® - Books and Literary News

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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.

March 11, 2021 4:04 AM

'Maniac' recounts deadliest school mass murder in American history

Author Harold Schechter details the 1927 school bombing in Bath Township, Mich., that killed 38 children and six adults. Days later, Charles Lindbergh's famous transatlantic flight captured headlines.

by Michael Schaub

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March 11, 2021 12:49 AM

Books hold the key to 'The Postscript Murders'

The woman who turns up dead at the start of Elly Griffiths' new novel billed herself as a "murder consultant" for writers. Griffiths says she was inspired by her aunt, who enjoys thinking up murders.

by Mary Louise Kelly

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March 10, 2021 11:00 AM

Are we failing boys in America?

In her searing new book, investigative journalist Emma Brown says boys in America face a crisis of emotional and mental health. Can we fix the system that is failing them?

by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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March 10, 2021 7:18 AM

'Phantom Tollbooth' author Norton Juster dies at 91

The author of the beloved children's book reunited with its illustrator for the more recent “The Odious Ogre.” Juster was also an architect and he died due to complications from a recent stroke.

by Andrew Limbong

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March 10, 2021 6:00 AM

The weird world of 'Cosmogony' is immensely inviting

In her first collection, Lucy Ives proves herself — and we mean this as a compliment — a real literary weirdo. Her stories are strange without ever performing strangeness, baffling yet precise.

by Lily Meyer

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March 9, 2021 2:46 PM

Inside the fight for the right to die: Logistical and ethical challenges

Katie Engelhart explores the complexity of physician-assisted death in the book The Inevitable. She says patients seeking to end their own lives sometimes resort to veterinary drugs from overseas.

by Terry Gross

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March 9, 2021 9:53 AM

The victims, rather than the killer, are at the center of 'Last Call'

The victims of the man dubbed the "Last Call Killer" were all gay men; Elon Green tries to shine a light onto their complicated lives, the messiness of who they were, and an era of queer life in NYC.

by Ilana Masad

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March 9, 2021 6:00 AM

A small village takes on big oil in 'How Beautiful We Were'

Imbolo Mbue's new novel is set in an unnamed country that could be any West African nation beset by international oil companies — and yet, it's a story of rebellion and rebirth, not calamity.

by Tochi Onyebuchi

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March 8, 2021 12:48 PM

CRISPR scientist's biography explores ethics of rewriting the code of life

“The Code Breaker” profiles Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist key to the development of CRISPR, and examines the technology's exciting possibilities and need for oversight.

by Terry Gross

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March 8, 2021 10:03 AM

Author explores preacher father's silence on racial injustice in 1960s Alabama

After Pulitzer Prize-winner John Archibald read sermons from his father's time as a Methodist preacher, he went on a quest to find out why his dad, a devout man, didn't speak out publicly on racism.

by Michel Martin

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