Shelfology Book Pairing

by Bill Bryson

Twenty years after his trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country, Bill Bryson makes a brand new journey around Britain to see what has changed. From Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn't altogether recognize anymore. Yet, despite Britain's occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, he is still pleased to call this rainy island home - and not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas ...

by Khaled Hosseini

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. “Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.