Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

While Macfarlane's walks range farther than most readers' might, his meditation on walking as a way of knowing oneself will inspire even the most non-athletic among us to head out for a stroll as spring comes to town. In The Old Ways, he provides a lyrical account of walking ancient paths across the world, from England to the Himalayas. Robert Macfarlane is another avid walker, though perhaps more academic in his pedestrian pursuits. He recounts his journey in his memoir Walking Home, sharing tales of his occasional companions, a litany of odd English place names and coming to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion.

More recently, Simon Armitage walked the 256-mile Pennine Way, bisecting England from the Midlands to the Scottish border in 19 days. Bill Bryson's entertaining A Walk in the Woods invites readers to accompany the humorous writer as he rediscovers America by hiking the Appalachian Trail. This restorative power of walking has been the subject not only of fiction, but of several memoirs. As he pushes himself past his physical limits, his walk becomes a path to self-discovery, during which he comes to terms with his past and rediscovers a zest for life he thought he'd lost for good. Armed with little more than yachting shoes and his own determination, his walk becomes about more than just delivering a letter. Rachel Joyce's debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, tells the story of an aging man who decides to walk to the post box to send a letter to a dying friend he passes one box, then the next, and soon finds himself walking across all of England to hand-deliver this letter to the other side of the country.

The stone sky series