Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (£6) is one of those books that you saw people reading everywhere when it was released (it floored us at a bus stop, and we had to wait a while before we carried on with our journey). It's the story of two women at different stages of their lives forming an unlikely friendship that's overshadowed by the Taliban takeover of Kabul. It can be hard going at times, but it's truly beautiful.