Hi. Hello. I hope you’re all keeping well. This month seems to have flown by so I apologise for rather rushing this out at the last minute.
I was reminded this week there are people in the world (some of whom should know better) who think that all contemporary book covers are boring and banal. I don’t really know where to start with arguments like this. It just seems objectively false to me?
Anyway, I hope these posts help dispel some of those notions and you enjoy this month’s selections….
Hi. Hello. I hope you’re keeping safe and well. I’m getting this month’s post out at little earlier than usual (i.e. not the 11th hour), and on a Monday no less, because I’m going to be in NYC the rest of this week for work. Even though this is a little bit of a quick and dirty post, there are still lots of covers for you to peruse and admire. Apologies if I’ve missed anything obvious and/or spectacular. I will try to catch up next month.
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley; design by Katy Homans; photo by Bill Brandt (NYRB Books / April 2026)Famesick by Lean Dunham; design by Teddy Blanks (I think?); photo by Anna Gaskell (Random House / April 2026)
I took a long-planned week off in March, so this month’s post was somewhat cobbled together around that trip and somehow we’ve ended up with lots of great covers to show for it! I should take vacation more often! There’s some particularly fun typography, some nice illustration, and some of the usual weirdness. Enjoy!
I had a hell of time trying to remember what this reminded me of, I think it is Jeffery Alan Love‘s illustration for the cover of Wolves by author Simon Ings published by Gollancz way back in 2014.
Coincidentally, the cover of Wolves and other Simon Ings titles from Gollancz were among the ABCD Award winners in 2015, and if you’re interested in reading about this year’s ABCD awards, which took place earlier this month, Vyki Hendy has a write up at SPINE.
Happy New Year! I hope you’re keeping safe and well.
I just re-read the introduction to my 2024 YA post and it says pretty much everything I was going to say about young adult covers this time around too, which is a bit annoying! There are still plenty of great covers this year, but trends sometimes move slowly, and it does make me worry that these posts are getting a little stale and predictable.
As with the previous couple of years, almost all of my 2025 selections are illustrated. Looking at original cover art and discovering new illustrators is definitely one of the joys of collating these post. It does make me wonder though, if the illustrations are thing, should I broaden the scope of the posts to include other categories to freshen things up?
I can see both sides.
YA cover designers and illustrators do not get a lot of attention despite all the cover reveals and special deluxe editions (not to mention book sales). I have been doing YA specific lists because no one else has been.
That said, the lines between categories and age-groups are blurred. I actually had to delete a couple of covers from this post because they were for SFF novels that were not strictly YA. I couldn’t tell from the covers. I only realized when I looked up the details. It happened last year too. Including other age groups would allow me to include illustrated science fiction, fantasy, and romance covers that also tend to get overlooked outside of their fan communities. But it would probably mean a bit less YA.
What to do?
Thanks again for all your support over the past year. I hope your still enjoying the posts, but please let me know if you have thoughts or additional design credits. I’d love to hear from you.
Beasts by Ingvild Bjerkeland, translated by Rosie Hedger; design by John Gall (Levine Querido / April 2025)
Before I realized that Beasts was actually a young adult novel, I included this in my round-up of last year’s adult covers. Now that I know that it’s a book for teens, I think it’s only appropriate to include here too in its proper context. It’s a great cover that stands out in both lists.
You’ve Found Oliver by Dustin Thao; design by Theresa Evangelista; illustration by Zipcy (Dutton BYR / September 2025)
I believe this is third Dustin Thao novel with a cover illustration by Zipcy, although I think the previous two were designed by Kerri Resnick for Wednesday Books.
This reminded me of the cover of There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone designed by Anna Kochman for Crown, which featured in March’s post. I’m no Barnett Newman, I do like a bold stripe.
Unfit by Ariana Harwicz, translated by Jessie Mendez Sayer; design by Erik Carter (New Directions / October 2025)
Dan Jackson also designed a new cover for the paperback edition of The Employees by Olga Ravn out next month in the UK from Penguin, which weirdly kind of looks like a Joan Wong collage, but could also be part of a dismembered / disembodied limbs on covers trend? I’m struggling to think of too many examples off the top of my head. Alban Fischer‘s cover design for My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova? But that’s not out until next year. I’m sure there are a couple of others out there. I will have a think on it.
I am very late to this one, but the art is fun and it kind of fits with recent trends so I didn’t want to leave it out. Let me know if there is a design credit to add.
Interestingly, Shannon Cartier Lucy’s art was also used on the cover of Worry by Alexandra Tanner designed by Alicia Tatone for Scribner from last year…
Hey. I hope you’re keeping safe and well. I’m posting this late on the last day of the month, but hopefully it was worth waiting for.
I will let you get to the covers posthaste, but before I go, today (September 30th) is also Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, so I would like take a moment to acknowledge and remember the survivors of residential schools, their families and the kids who didn’t come home. <3
This is holographic foil just in case it’s not obvious from the above (and if someone at Head of Zeus / Bloomsbury is reading and wants to fire me a better cover image that would be great!)
With this and the cover of The Dilemmas of Working Women designed by Sarah Kellogg (featured last month), we may have a new sub-genre of ‘well dressed and distressed’. Are there other examples?
Possibly a different kind of distress, the UK edition of Discontent, published last month by Harvill Secker, was designed by Kris Potter using a photograph by Laurent Tixador.
Dogs by C. Mallon; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / August 2025)
Is the “blob cut-out” a thing? I kind of thought it was but then I couldn’t think of any other examples except maybe this Paul Sahre / Erik Carter cover for The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson from a few years ago, which is more of a collage really. Are they any other examples?
Hey, sorry, just sliding in under the wire with another slightly rushed post this month. I hope everyone is safe and well (all things considered). Let’s just get on with it shall we?
Also, the cover of Matt Wesolowski’s book Six Stories designed by Mark Swan was featured here way back in April 2017 (which was a pretty good month for covers!)
Jenny has a new portfolio site so go check that out. (Also, if anyone has a higher res version of the cover for The Holy Innocents, please send it over! I’d love to have a better one. Thanks!)
I am a sucker for good photo selection on a cover. This photo is from Ed Templeton’s series/installation (and book) Teenage Smokers. Although it is kind of interesting to me that a book with such a British title uses a photograph by an American photographer, but it does have incredible 1990s vibes.
The cover of the UK edition, published by Daunt Books, was designed by Kishan Rajani. It’s interesting to see the differences in two covers with a similar approach…
I recently came across this short PBS Artbound documentary from 2021 on artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent (1918-1986), which is well worth 20 minutes of your time.
I don’t remember when I first came across Sister Corita’s work. It was probably not until I moved to Canada and became more interested in design and applying typography and lettering to art. Certainly, she was not someone I learnt about in school. It’s hard to know whether that is the result of a parochial British education, or more generalized misogyny and prejudice in art history, or a bit both. But, as the documentary makes clear, she remains a source of inspiration for artists, designers, and teachers 40 years after her death.
The ‘Ten Rules’ she helped create with the students of the Immaculate Heart College Art Department seem as relevant today as they must have at the time they were first written:
You can listen to former students, artists, community organizers, and others read and reflect on the Ten Rules here.
First episode of (the long-awaited) second season of Steve Leard‘s excellent book cover design podcast Cover Meeting is a conversation with Irish freelance designer Jack Smyth in which he discusses his work, the industry, building community, how he really feels about cover quotes, and more.
I’m a big fan of Jack’s work and it has regularly featured here over the years. He’s always helping with attributions and corrections, and generally supporting the blog, so I really appreciate the mention on the podcast. Cheers, mate.
Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)Antkind by Charlie Kaufman; design by Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / July 2020)The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic; design by Jack Smyth (Open Letter / November 2020)True Biz by Sara Novic; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2022)The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight; design Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2022)MILF by Paloma Faith; design by Jack Smyth (Ebury / June 2024)
Hey, I hope you’re safe and well. This month’s post is a big one so I’m pretty much going to let you get on with it, but before I do, I just wanted to mention that I’ve included a gallery of all this month’s covers as the bottom of the post so you can click through them all. This is in response to a reader email about the size of the covers on screen. I think the gallery looks nice, but I am worried that it’s going to play absolute havoc with the RSS / email so apologies in advance if that’s case. Anyway, enjoy this month’s covers, and let me know what you think.
Hey, I hope you’re keeping safe, well and warm (or cool!) wherever you are.
If you missed it, my first post of 2025 was a look back at some of last year’s YA covers. You can find my 2024 list of notable literary covers here. Both posts got me thinking more generally about these lists. Do I need to change things up? Or stop altogether? Several other sites are posting lists that do much the same thing mine, and they are all starting to feel too alike. I don’t have answer, and I don’t really know I would do differently. I’m struggling to post once a month as it is. For now at least I’ll keep posting the covers that interest me. It’s just something that’s on my mind, and I have other projects I’ve been neglecting, so I’m curious if you have opinions.
Anyway, this month’s post is a bit of a short (but good!) one, and includes a couple of covers that I missed in 2024 for one reason or another. Enjoy!
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht; design by Sinem Erkas (Profile Books / November 2024)
I do really like this cover. It looks great! But it also looks a lot like non-fiction, especially when compared to the cover of the US edition (Liveright, October 2024) designed by Jason Heuer. They look like completely different books!
And speaking of Jason Heuer, he’s made a series of fun videos talking about embarrassing moments from his early graphic design career. You can find them on YouTube and Instagram. In the second episode Jason talks about his first book design credit…
Happy New Year! I hope you’re keeping safe and well. The first post of the year is the now customary look back at the previous year’s Young Adult covers. All the covers on this year’s list are illustrated (which was almost, but not quite, the case last year too). I love illustration — it’s part of the reason why I still keep doing these posts! — so it’s possible that this just reflects my personal preferences, but almost all the YA covers I saw this year were illustrated. There were very few photographic or type/letter-only covers.
I compile this list a little differently to my adult list. It’s mostly done over a few weeks at the end of the year rather than compiled across the year as a whole. I’m sure this skews my selections too. I’m probably overly reliant on cover reveal posts and best of the year lists. I think this probably means that the big American publishers are over-represented, which is less than ideal. I suspect they’re dominant in the category anyway, but I’m sure I am missing some interesting covers from independent and international publishers all the same.
The Horror and Fantasy seem to be having a moment. The line between YA and adult covers seems very blurred in both genres. I had to double-check a number to titles to confirm where they belonged. It happened often enough for me to think it was intentional, which probably speaks to who is reading YA and what they are looking for. It is also possible that I am over-indexing both genres here because they seem more mature and they appeal to me personally. I am also less of a fan of the illustration styles popular for the romance genres at the moment, so I think it’s fair to say they are under-represented on the list. I am very aware that I am not the target audience, so I’m not sure it is something that should overly worry art directors (although apologies if you’re disappointed not to see more of your covers on the list!). Still, it might be nice to see some new / different approaches to Romance — and all genres, frankly — going forward.
And with that, I wish you all the best for 2025, and I hope you enjoy the post!
I think this is my favourite cover from the series thus far, but the covers of the original Clown in a Cornfield from 2020, and the second book Frendo Livesfrom 2022, are also very creepy.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi; design Richard Deas (Henry Holt / March 2018)Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi; design by Richard Deas, Mallory Grigg, and Kathleen Breitenfeld; art by Sarah Jones (Henry Holt / December 2019)
The Silence of Bones by June Hur; design by Katie Klimowicz; art by Kasiq Jungwoo (Feiwel & Friends / April 2020)The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur; illustration Pedro Tapa (Feiwel & Friends / April 2021)
I missed the cover of The Family Fortuna by Lindsay Eagar last year, but it’s also delightfully creepy. The art is by Elena Masci, and I believe the designer is Matt Roeser.
This is actually the paperback of the first title in series. The new cover matches the latest book, released in July, The Mirror of Beasts.
Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken; design Liz Dresner; art Tomasz Majewski (Ember / May 2024)The Mirror of Beasts by Alexandra Bracken; design Liz Dresner; art Tomasz Majewski (Alfred A. Knopf BYR / July 2024)
I was sure I had included the covers forThe Dead and the Dark and Where Echoes Die by Courtney Gould illustrated by Peter Strain in previous lists, but apparently I hadn’t. They’re really nice:
