When an aspiring novelist moves into an apartment above a famous author, the younger writer thinks it’s a sign that literary stardom is right around the corner. He’s partly right. But his luck is about to turn in ways he can’t expect. Matthew Pearl, himself an award-winning author, writes what he knows in his new novel, “ The Award ” — which is why the book swerves into some wildly dark places. He returns to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk with Kerri Miller about the absurdity of the ...
Jan 23, 2026•57 min
When MPR News host Kerri Miller travels to small towns around Minnesota for her Rural Voice series, she hears over and over again about the crisis of loneliness and social isolation . People say that even in communities where they know everyone, it’s easy to feel adrift. It’s no surprise to neuroscientist Ben Rein, who studies the inner workings of the human brain. He writes in his new book that our brains have been shaped for social contact, both inside and out. When we don’t get enough social ...
Jan 16, 2026•53 min
Only one day after Jen Hatmaker discovered her husband of 26 years was having an affair, her intuition lead her to dissolution, not restoration. In an early chapter of hew new memoir, Hatmaker writes: “What instinct drove me to an attorney instead of back to a marriage therapist? I was acting purely on intuition — which I only figured out later is the most trustworthy character in the play.” Learning to listen to and trust her “inner knowing” is just one powerful lesson Hatmaker learned in the c...
Jan 09, 2026•54 min
Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller interviews a lot of authors over the course of a year. But some conversations stand out for being especially fascinating, delightfully fun or unexpectedly candid. Last week, we unveiled three of Miller’s top five favorites from 2025 . This week, the final two — plus one surprise. 2025 Best Book Roundups MPR News staff picks The 43 best books MPR News staff read in 2025 From NPR Hunker down with these 13 mysteries and thrillers from 2025 From U.S. librar...
Jan 02, 2026•52 min
Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller interviews a lot of authors over the course of a year. But some conversations stand out for being especially fascinating, delightfully fun or unexpectedly candid. So this week and next, Miller and producer Kelly Gordon share their favorite, most surprising shows from the last 12 months. This week’s conversations include authors: Sarah Hoover Charles Bock Fabienne Josaphat Stay tuned for the final two favorites of 2025 — and a bonus surprise — next week....
Dec 26, 2025•51 min
Dictionary.com’s word of the year isn’t really a word — it’s a number that went viral on TikTok. The selection caused a ruckus among lexicographers. But editors argued that social media is a major force in creating new words these days, and the whole point of choosing a word of the year is to “reveal the stories we tell about ourselves and how we've changed.” It’s no surprise to author Stefan Fatsis, who chronicles the rise of the modern dictionary in his new book, “ Unabridged: The Thrill of an...
Dec 19, 2025•51 min
Bad omens abound. But it’s not enough to dissuade 13 tourists on a luxury cruise to Antarctica — including protagonist Striker, a Black film scout on the ship to search for a location to shoot a movie about Ernest Shackleton — from a kayak excursion on a chilly Christmas Eve. As the group paddles past towering icebergs and desolate landscapes, a sense of unease gives way to full on dread. And then it all goes terribly awry. “Antarctica is the land of illusion,” writes author Quan Barry. “All of ...
Dec 12, 2025•51 min
In Catherine Newman’s bestselling novel, “ Sandwich ,” main character Rachel (nicknamed Rocky), her unflappable husband and newly adult kids decamp to a ramshackle cottage in Cape Cod for a week of sprawling on the sand, late night swims and lazy mornings. Rocky’s aging parents join them halfway through. It sounds perfect — and in many ways, it is. But as anyone who’s ever take a family vacation knows, complicated feelings get stirred up when you spend 24 hours a day with the people you love the...
Dec 05, 2025•54 min
For 17 years, Mary Lucia was the voice of The Current, MPR’s music-first radio station. Her afternoon drive shifts were beloved for their rock-and-roll vibes, unpredictable humor and human connection. But then a stalker exploited Lucia’s on-air vulnerability, and everything changed. In her new memoir, “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To,” Lucia tells the full story of how she dealt with escalating harassment in private while she tried to maintain a very public life. Al...
Nov 28, 2025•51 min
Kate Baer wore sequins to Talking Volumes. It was a fitting close to the 2025 season — and not-so-subtle reminder that today is all we are promised. Might as well wear the sequins. Talking Volumes: Kate Baer Baer’s latest book of poetry, “ How About Now ,” captures the mundane beauty of what it means to be a modern woman in midlife. She writes of shifting roles and shifting bodies, of the joy she finds in her family — even if she’d rather stand outside and look at them through the window, and th...
Nov 21, 2025•1 hr 14 min
Curses have long animated literature. Cassandra labors under a curse in “The Iliad.” Although her prophecies are true, she is never believed. Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” endure the curse of a tragic fate, predetermined, in part, because their families despise each another. In Oyinkan Braithwaite’s long awaited second novel, “ Cursed Daughters ,” generation after generation of women are cursed to lose their true loves. This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller welcomes Braithwaite ...
Nov 14, 2025•51 min
“ Nuremberg ” opens in the spring of 1945. Hitler is dead. Many of his henchmen have died by suicide, have been arrested or have fled. The world is just beginning to grapple with the horrors committed by the Third Reich. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second in command, is arrested by American troops in Austria, who discover him heading west in a convoy of family and friends. Ostensibly, he intends to surrender to the Allies. The film tells the story of the American lead prosecutor, Robert Jackson, wh...
Nov 07, 2025•55 min
The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul was packed with John Grisham fans on Thursday, Oct. 23, when the prolific author made his debut at Talking Volumes. Host Kerri Miller started the night by asking the audience and then Grisham himself to confirm or deny a series of facts. Does Grisham breed champion sheepdogs at his home in Virginia? Has he been knighted? Does he write a sizzling sex scene for each of his books, just to prove that he can — only to take it out before he sends the manuscript to hi...
Oct 31, 2025•1 hr 43 min
The two women at the center of Anna North’s new novel, “Bog Queen,” are separated by time but inexorably bound. One is a druid who lived during the Iron Age. The other is the modern forensic scientist who is called upon to investigate the druid’s perfectly preserved body after it is unearthed from a British bog. Agnes is drawn to the mystery and even sacredness of her work. Who was this woman, and how is her body still telling her story? But it is, as we say today, complicated. Should ancient bo...
Oct 24, 2025•54 min
Even before Misty Copeland became the first Black woman to be named a principal dancer at the illustrious American Ballet Theatre, she electrified the world of ballet. A prodigy who didn’t start dancing until she was 13, she grew up in a transient and often chaotic home. But after she was discovered in a Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles by a ballet teacher who wanted to expose more kids to the art form, she quickly shot into the national spotlight. As a teen, she studied at the prestigious S...
Oct 17, 2025•1 hr 25 min
Twenty-five years ago this fall, a generation of readers met 10-year-old India Opal Buloni and her loveable, scruffy dog, Winn-Dixie — so named because Opal found the canine while he was causing chaos in the produce aisle of the local grocery store. Winn-Dixie transformed Opal’s life, as only a dog can do. And their story changed those who read it, as only a book can do. “ Because of Winn-Dixie ” received a Newbery Honor the year it was published — a significant award for a debut children’s book...
Oct 10, 2025•41 min
When Patricia Lockwood contracted COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, she lost touch with reality. For months, she floated through her days, dealing with constant migraines and visions of gorillas lurking in the trees. Ironically, she was mostly aware that she was cut loose from humanity. She kept notebooks filled with her wonderings and ramblings. And when she got better, she gathered her shattered experiences into a sharp new novel, “ Will There Ever Be Another You .” Talking Volumes: Patricia Loc...
Oct 03, 2025•1 hr 27 min
The fictional Bonhomie, Ohio, where Patrick Ryan’s new novel, “ Buckeye ,” is set, will be familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town. Children ride their bikes freely. Mom-and-pop stores thrive. And sooner or later, everyone crosses paths with each other. That sense of closeness is charming — until you have a secret to hide. Such is the case with the two couples at the center of Ryan’s sweeping saga. Cal Jenkins is born with one leg two inches shorter than the other and, thus, is unable to ...
Sep 26, 2025•56 min
The final ballots were still being counted in the presidential election last fall when David French recorded a podcast with fellow opinion writer Patrick Healy. The theme? “ It’s time to admit America has changed .” Kerri Miller welcomed the chance to ask French to expound on what he meant then and what he’s learned since when he came to Red Wing last Thursday night as part of the Philip S. Duff Jr. Civic Lecture Series. French is a conservative commentator, a constitutional lawyer, former senio...
Sep 25, 2025•1 hr 36 min
When the Wilder Foundation set out on a cool night in October of 2023 to count how many people in Minnesota were without shelter, the number came in at more than 10,000 . Even more sobering, if national statistics apply: Many of those unhoused people have jobs. Some even work 40 or more hours a week. But they still can’t afford to rent an apartment, buy a house or even pay the fees for a long-term motel room. In his new book, journalist Brian Goldstone writes that there is “something scandalous”...
Sep 19, 2025•51 min
The Fitzgerald Theater was filled to the rafters Wednesday night for the season launch of Talking Volumes. Activist and novelist Stacey Abrams joined Kerri Miller on stage and began the evening with a moment of silence to mark the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, who had been shot and killed only hours earlier. Abrams, herself a national political figure, said dark moments such as these need to be met with determined unity — to stand for and with one another. She got those values from he...
Sep 12, 2025•1 hr 4 min
When the next pandemic hits, will we be ready? That’s the question at the center of University of Minnesota epidemiologist Mike Osterholm’s new book, “ The Big One .” And his answer is sobering. Osterholm joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a blunt and personal assessment of what went right and what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s insistent that if we don’t learn the lessons of the last pandemic, we will be even less prepared for the next one. Here are f...
Sep 06, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Stephen Grant was laid off from his job at a boutique marketing agency in March 2020, right when COVID took the world hostage. Newly diagnosed with cancer, he needed health insurance, fast — plus, he was the primary financial supporter of his wife and daughters. Which is how he found himself becoming a mail carrier, back in his hometown in rural Appalachia. It was a tough transition. Grant was bad at his job — “deeply incompetent,” he writes in his new memoir, “ Mailman .” He is shaken by his la...
Aug 29, 2025•1 hr 2 min
In the seas off Madagascar, Nova Scotia and even Connecticut, the siren call of buried riches has lured treasure hunters and adventurers over many a century. Many seek the wealth Capt. Kidd accrued during years of pirating and then had to hide when his arrest was imminent. In popular lore, Capt. Kidd’s name is synonymous with the fearsome, ruthless privateers of the pirate age. But the truth about William Kidd is more nuanced — and interesting. Historian Samuel Marquis, who is also William Kidd’...
Aug 22, 2025•53 min
Maralyn and Maurice Bailey were always a little unconventional. Maurice was a loner, precise. Maralyn was extroverted and energetic. But when they married in the 1960s, they both felt they had found their person. Together, they dreamed of running away from their ordinary lives — of selling everything and sailing the world. And in 1972, they made it happen. They set course for a fresh start in New Zealand and left England in a 31-foot yacht. All went well until they reached the Pacific, where a c...
Aug 15, 2025•55 min
If you’re a romance reader, you won’t be surprised to hear that romance is the biggest genre in publishing. Nearly 40 million romance novels were sold in 2024. Books range from flirty (fade to black) to downright steamy (open door), with myriads of subgenres and tropes to choose from. (Rom-com! Paranormal romance! Historical fiction!) So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller sits down with three Minnesota romance experts to talk about romance writing and reading today. She brings...
Aug 08, 2025•58 min
Is loneliness something that happens when you’re not looking? And if so, could meaningful connection be found in a simple but purposeful café, where the lonesome are paired with the perfect partners for deep conversation? That’s the fantasy at the heart of Kathy Wang’s new novel, “ The Satisfaction Café .” It follows Joan who starts the book as a Chinese graduate students in California in the 1970s. But her life quickly turns, as revealed on page one, when Wang writes: “Joan had not thought she ...
Aug 01, 2025•52 min
The setting for Dwyer Murphy’s new book, “ The House on Buzzards Bay ,” is classic New England noir: A large and ancient house along the coast is inherited by protagonist Jim, who decides to use it to host his college friends for a summer reunion, hoping to reignite their bonds. But nothing is quite as it seems. Both the house and the group are out of sorts. One friend mysteriously disappears. The town deals with a series of break-ins. Jim starts to feel like the energy in the house is off — tha...
Jul 25, 2025•51 min
Honoring the dead by washing the body is a ritual nearly as old as humankind. Jews observe taharah, rooting the practice in Ecclesiastes: “As we come forth, so we shall return.” In Islamic tradition, washing the deceased as an act of devotion and love. Joy Harjo , former poet laureate and citizen of the Muscogee Nation, expected to honor her mother’s death and life by washing her body, but as she reveals in the introduction to her new book, the ritual didn’t happen — leaving her to wander throug...
Jul 18, 2025•50 min
When Sarah Kendzior packs up her family for a road trip across America, she makes sure her kids keep their eyes wide open. She wants them to see this country’s wonders and its flaws. Her new memoir, “ The Last American Road Trip ,” recounts the dozens of drives they’ve taken since 2016. They leave their home in Missouri and crisscross the country, even as earth-shaking events remake it. Along the way, she disentangles venerated American ideals from the mythology of American exceptionalism. She g...
Jul 11, 2025•51 min
