I went to the library today for the first time in months. I got The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (I enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns but for some reason have never got round to reading this one), The Moonlit Cage by Linda Holeman and The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier.

1970s Afghanistan: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

The fourteen haunting stories collected here span the whole of Daphne du Maurier’s writing career and explore every human emotion: an apparently happily married woman commits suicide; a steamer in wartime is rescused by a mysterious sailing-ship; a dull husband breaks loose in a surprising fashion; a con girl plays her game once too often; and a famous novelist looks for romance, only to meet with bitter disappointment. Each meticulously observed tale shows du Maurier’s mastery of the genre and provides pleasure for a variety of moods.

The Moonlit Cage is the spellbinding story of Darya, a young Afghan girl, cursed, worthless and despised by her husband and her family, who embarks on the journey of a lifetime – one that takes her from the unforgiving valleys and mountains of her homeland to 1850s London, the heart of the mighty British Empire.