This week we are delighted to announce the start of the Daily Express Reading Group, a chance to discuss books online with other keen readers. Each month we'll choose a different book and invite you to tell us your opinions. This month's choice A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is reviewed by Caroline Jowett. Khaled Hosseini is one of those rare authors whose books are word of mouth bestsellers. His first book, The Kite Runner, has sold millions of copies worldwide and is now a major new film. His second book A Thousand Splendid Suns has enjoyed similar publishing success. He's a natural storyteller. The twists and turns of his plots shock and surprise and the characters work their way into the hardest hearts. Which is why we have chosen A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury, £11.99. Available from the Express Bookshop for £10.99 as the first book in the new monthly Daily Express Reading Group. It's a beautifully-told, immensely moving story of two women that will keep you gripped until the last sentence. There's plenty to think about and lots to discuss. It's one of those books about which you can't fail to have an opinion. The advice commonly given to first-time authors is: write about what you know. And Hosseini, a surgeon who wrote The Kite Runner in the early mornings before leaving for work, has done just that in both his books. An Afghan who fled to America in 1980 where he and his family were granted political asylum, he chose to set them in the Afghanistan of his childhood. A place of political unrest, a deposed monarchy , Soviet invasion and revolutionary fervour that in time gave way to the rise of religious fundamentalism and the brutal Taliban regime. In doing so he's lifted the veil on another world. One Western readers might initially feel unfamiliar with, but in which they will find kindred spirits and the same hopes and passions, fears and disappointments. The key to his success lies in his characters. In A Thousand Splendid Suns he tells the story of Mariam and Laila the wives of the abusive and bitter Rasheed, a monstrous man who takes out his disappointments and failures in life on his family. But even Rasheed first appears with a human side. At the start of his marriage to Mariam a girl 30 years his junior he tries to be kind and understanding, but his temper, aggravated by his disappointment at her inability to bear him children, strangles any chance their marriage might have had, until they exist uneasily amid his sniping criticism and her downtrodden acceptance. Mariam is a harami, an illegitimate child whose status and shame defines her life. When after 20 years of marriage Rasheed announces his intention to wed the beautiful educated but destitute Laila, her status is lowered further. Laila's arrival adds another layer of hositlity and resentment to the household until she protects Mariam in a fight with Rasheed. From there an unbreakable bond of sisterly love develops which grows as the family's fortunes decline from relative comfort to desperate poverty. Peppered with anecdotes of atrocities and injustices perpetrated in the name of religion, the plot's brutality has the stamp of truth, but far from being a bleak novel it is tender and beautifully told. Hosseini weaves the plot brilliantly between the menace of the changing political climate, the rising tension at home, and the closeness of the two women until the final shocking climax.The Daily Express Reading Group is an online forum where readers can get together and discuss a different paperback each month. Once you've read the book you can log onto our website at  http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books add your comments and share your opinions with other readers. There you will also find more information on the book, questions to get you thinking and suggestion of other books you might enjoy. We look forward to reading your comments.