Best Books of the Month

Discover Amazon editors’ picks for March–available at 40% off all month long–plus more new releases not to miss

• Spotlight Selection: Matterhorn: A Novel of Vietnam by Karl Marlantes
• Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom
• The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
• Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
• Horns by Joe Hill
• Matterhorn is a marvel–a living, breathing book with Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company at its raw and battered heart.
• Recommended for fans of Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey and Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads by Stephen Asma.
• To the ranks of iconic mid-century-modern men Gump and Garp, add The Irresistible Henry House.
• In her witty and wise debut novel, newcomer Helen Simonson introduces the unforgettable character of the widower Major Ernest Pettigrew.

Spotlight Selection: Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

Matterhorn is a marvel–a living, breathing book with Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company at its raw and battered heart. Karl Marlantes doesn’t introduce you to Vietnam in his brilliant war epic–he unceremoniously drops you into the jungle, disoriented and dripping with leeches, with only the newbie lieutenant as your guide. Mellas is a bundle of anxiety and ambition, a college kid who never imagined being part of a “war that none of his friends thought was worth fighting,” who realized too late that “because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all.” A highly decorated Vietnam veteran himself, Marlantes brings the horrors and heroism of war to life with the finesse of a seasoned writer, exposing not just the things they carry, but the fears they bury, the friends they lose, and the men they follow. Matterhorn is as much about the development of Mellas from boy to man, from the kind of man you fight beside to man you fight for, as it is about the war itself. Through his untrained eyes, readers gain a new

Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom

For many, taxidermy summons images of wildlife frozen in menacing poses, teeth bared in an eternal rictus; or maybe it’s the lamented family cat, forever curled in purr-less slumber. With Still Life, Melissa Milgrom peels the skin back on Norman Bates’s favorite pastime, dutifully tracking taxidermy from its 19th-century heyday (the beneficiary of a natural history boom), to its nadir as a reviled predilection in the age of PETA and conservation. It will tell most readers as much as they need to know about erosion-molded rats and replacement lips, ears, and eyelids, but it’s the culture of iron-stomached men (and occasionally, women) that practice the art of skinned carcasses and stretched hides–those who wield “the calipers and the brain spoons”–that Milgrom’s after. Beginning as a wide-eyed visitor to a third-generation stuff shop, she moves through an underworld of auctions, artisans, scientists, and the ultra competitive (albeit insular) World Taxidermy Championships, ultimately trying a queasy hand at squirrel-stuffing herself. Still Life is an entertaining and illuminating adventure. –Jon Foro

Recommended for fans of Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey and Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads by Stephen Asma

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