Khaled Hosseini's bestselling story of a boy growing up in 1970s Kabul has again been voted the Reading Group Book of the Year.

The book under discussion this month is Mr Phillips, the second novel from Whitbread prize-winner John Lanchester. It charts a day in the life of the Pooterish eponymous hero, an accountant who lives under the Heathrow flight path with his wife, Mrs Phillips, with whom he shares an existence of dismal ordinariness. On the Monday in question, however, events depart from the ordinary. Mr Phillips, who has lost his job but has yet to tell his wife, leaves the house in the morning and finds himself involved in a series of increasingly unusual situations: from a bank robbery and a rescue, to an in-depth conversation with a pornographer.

Has Zadie Smith's talent blossomed into the mastery of early maturity? Few novelists have attracted as much attention as Smith, especially when still so young. Bright, beautiful and undoubtedly gifted, it would be hard to think of a figure better suited to today's literary culture. Her third novel, On Beauty, is the subject of this month's Guardian book club.

March's book of the month is Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, Never Le Me Go. Narrated by 31-year-old Kathy, Never Let Me Go (which narrowly lost to last month's author John Banville's The Sea at this year's Booker) reveals her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic boarding school. Out of the usual teenage fare of friends, relationships and secrets emerges a tale of chilling hopelessness, ably conveyed in Ishiguro's recognisably bleak, blank tones.

The Untouchable by John Banville
Welcome back, book clubbers - this month, we're tackling The Untouchable, the 1997 novel by last year's Booker-winner, John Banville. Part literary thriller, part existential novel, The Untouchable offers us a fictionalised version of the well-known story of Anthony Blunt: art historian, aesthete and one of the 20th century's most notorious spies.

Dark times: the cover of Hilary Mantel's
Beyond Black
New year, new book club book. This month, we're discussing Hilary Mantel's darkly comic novel of the afterlife, Beyond Black. Despite missing out on the big awards last year, the book was lauded by critics and reviewers, and name-checked time and again on the Christmas books of the year lists.

Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain
In this month's Guardian book club, the book under discussion is Rose Tremain's 1999 Whitbread novel of the year, Music and Silence. The novel, set in the early 17th-century Danish court of King Christian IV, is the tale of a young and beautiful English lute player, Peter Claire, who comes to join Christian's orchestra and is rapidly drawn into the king's confidence. The story of Peter's love for Emilia, the servant of Queen Kirsten, is interwoven with other narratives: the crumbling of Kirsten and Christian's marriage; the struggle of Peter's previous patron to remember the divine music he heard in a dream; the behaviour of Emilia's grotesque family.

Parrot fashion: the cover of Barnes' book
The inaugural book under discussion in the Guardian Book Club is Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes' dextrous, absorbing examination of Flaubert's influence on the world. In his first two columns, John Mullan has explored the influence of literary criticism on the novel and the role of the narrator - but these, of course, are just his opinions. Do you agree with his view that the novel "might be seen as a fictional pretext for its author's own literary criticism"? Or that Barnes' use of a first person narrator "licenses the passages of polemic against those who have wilfully misunderstood Flaubert"? Or has he missed the point entirely? This is your space to voice your opinions on the novel, and we will be listening - a selection of your posts will appear in the Guardian Review in the final column on the novel, in two weeks' time.