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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.

Emily St. John Mandel on time travel, destiny and what might have been

Emily St. John Mandel on time travel, destiny and what might have been

The best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel” is back with a novel of art, time, love and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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Delia Ephron on surviving cancer and the defiance of falling in love in your 70s

Delia Ephron on surviving cancer and the defiance of falling in love in your 70s

In her new memoir “Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life,” Delia Ephron writes about losing her first husband, finding new love, and how surviving cancer has changed her outlook on life.
by Terry Gross

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'Pandemic, Inc.' author says financial predators made more than $1 billion off COVID

'Pandemic, Inc.' author says financial predators made more than $1 billion off COVID

In his new book, ProPublica reporter J. David McSwane says a shocking number of companies that received funds at the beginning of the pandemic to distribute protective gear had no experience doing so.
by Dave Davies

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From the archives: Physicist Lisa Randall on dark matter, meteoroids and the demise of the dinosaurs

From the archives: Physicist Lisa Randall on dark matter, meteoroids and the demise of the dinosaurs

This Friday, MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Emily St. John Mandel about her much-anticipated and just released novel “Sea of Tranquility.” It asks some big philosophical and science fiction questions about time travel. So as a throwback, we thought you’d enjoy this 2015 conversation with astrophysicist Lisa Randall, who says there’s a closer parallel between imagination and science than you might guess.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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As 'The Velveteen Rabbit' turns 100, its message continues to resonate

As 'The Velveteen Rabbit' turns 100, its message continues to resonate

"To engage children's interest in anything you have to be keenly interested in that thing yourself," Margery Williams Bianco wrote in 1925. Her story endures because it connects to so many people.
by Elizabeth Blair

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New book puts history of racial exclusion in Minnesota in 'plain view'

New book puts history of racial exclusion in Minnesota in 'plain view'

For "Whiteness in Plain View: A History of Racial Exclusion in Minnesota," Chad Montrie, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, researched how white Minnesotans used legal and illegal means to prevent people of color from coming to the state, to drive them out or segregate them. 
by Brandt Williams

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How 'SNL' alum Molly Shannon found profound healing after childhood tragedy

How 'SNL' alum Molly Shannon found profound healing after childhood tragedy

Shannon's new memoir, “Hello, Molly!” opens with the car crash that killed her mother and sister when Shannon was 4. She says, for a long time, she was motivated by a desire to make her mom proud.
by Terry Gross

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Ask a Bookseller: 'Lessons in Chemistry'

Ask a Bookseller: 'Lessons in Chemistry'

"If you can imagine Julia Child channeling a little bit of Lucille Ball, and all of the science edginess of Madame Curie, then you'll have a really good idea of the humor and the wit and the warmth that just shine through this entire novel," says Crowe.
by Emily Bright

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Mary-Frances O'Connor on 'The Grieving Brain'

Mary-Frances O'Connor on 'The Grieving Brain'

More than 50 years ago, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the world to the five stages of grief, a model that shaped how many of us approach bereavement. But neuroscience is widening the lens. Mary-Frances O’Connor details how grief rewires the brain in her new book, and why we often struggle to accept the loss.
by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon

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