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Book Covers of Note, August 2019

Here are your August book covers of note. Another good month, I think?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / July2019)

This is apparently available now (according to Faber’s Instagram at least!), but I haven’t been able to find it online. If anyone cares to share the ISBN, I will try to add a link.

The new design is inspired by the 1966 cover designed by Shirley Tucker.

Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)

This is an interesting change in direction from the cover of The Infatuations by Javier Marías designed by Isabel Urbina Peña and published by Knopf in 2013.

(The UK covers for Javier Marías’ novels published by Hamish Hamilton are photographic. If anyone can supply me with the design/photo credits, I’d be happy to add them in here for reference!).

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Catholic School by Edoardo Albinati; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2019)

Thank you to the good folks on Twitter who helped me identify the designer and then the typeface. It turns out the type is “Lydia” from Colophon Foundry — a revival of the Bold Condensed styles of (you guessed it!) Lydian. 

Chances Are… by Richard Russo; dsign by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)

Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)

And you can read a recent interview with Jack about his work at It’s Nice That.  

Ether by Evgenia Citkowitz design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / July 2019)

You can listen to Henry discussing his work with Holly Dunn on the latest Spine podcast.  

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition, which will be published by Scribner in January 2020(!) was designed by Jaya Miceli featuring a collage by Toon Joosen.

Lithium by Walter A. Brown; design by Keith Hayes (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)

More Noble Than War by Nicholas Blincoe; design by Steve Leard (Constable / August 2019)

This reminded me of Henry’s cover for A Wall in Palestine by René Backman published by Picador in 2010…

The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)

I stopped keeping track of ‘flora-intertwined-with-type’ covers a while ago, but this would be a nice addition to that list

One Giant Leap by Charles Fishman; design by Richard Ljoenes (Simon & Schuster / June 2019)

Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by Penguin was designed by Na Kim.

The Perfect Plan by Bryan Reardon; design by Jason Booher (Dutton / June 2019)

I like this cover a lot, but it is surprisingly un-bonkers for Jason. I would not have guessed he was the designer! 

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)

Tree also designed the cover of the UK edition published by And Other Stories last year. She wrote about the process of designing both covers for Spine not so long ago (they really are doing a better a job of this than me, aren’t they?).

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

I think it’s kind of interesting to see these two designs side by side….

Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Sadly this image doesn’t quite do justice to just how brilliantly orange this cover is in IRL. And apparently flowery collages are the new thing… 

The Western Alienation Merit Badge by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)

Michel has also dusted off his comics publishing endeavour Black Eye Books if you’d like to support him. There is a new book by Jay Stephens planned for next month.  

White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019)

This is one of my favourite covers of the year so far, I think. 

One Comment

  1. Megan Wilson

    The Infatuations was published by Vintage, and we still use that look.

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