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Book Covers of Note, May 2022

I compile these posts over the month and then write this bit at the end if I have anything to say. I really don’t have the words at the moment. Posting about the most superficial of subjects feels faintly ridiculous at the end of yet another awful week. But here we are. I am just going to refer you to Wednesday’s Today in Tabs and say that there a lot of really nice covers this month if you are need of distraction…

Appliance by J. O. Morgan; design by the author (Jonathan Cape / May 2022)

City of Orange by David Yoon; design by Eric Fuentecilla (G. P. Putnam’s Sons / May 2022)

Elektra by Jennifer Saint; design by Joanne O’Neill (Flatiron Books / May 2022)

The cover of Ariadne by Jennifer Saint, also designed by Joanne O’Neill, was on my Notable list last year.

The cover of the UK edition of Elektra, published by Headline imprint Wildfire last month, was designed by Micaela Alcaino who recently won Designer of the Year at the British Book Awards.

EspaƱa by Giles Tremlett; design by Jessie Price; art by Oscar Dominguez (Head of Zeus / April 2022)

The type is apparently Ohno Blazeface if you are curious.

Finding Me by Viola Davis; design Stephen Brayda; photograph by AB+DM (HarperOne / April 2022)

The Illusion of Simple by Charles Forrest Jones; design by Derek Thornton / Notch Design (University of Iowa / May 2022)

Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough; design by Juliana Lee (William Morrow & Company / April 2022)

I like the wobbly type.

The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards; design by Steve Leard (HarperCollins / May 2022)

I was reminded of Jon Gray‘s cover for Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco from what seems like ages ago (2010)… Of course they look nothing alike. I had completely forgotten the pen was at jaunty angle.

Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera; design by Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / May 2022)

Losing Face by George Haddad; design Josh Durham (University of Queensland Press / May 2022)

Mean Baby by Selma Blair; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Peggy Sirota (Knopf / May 2022)

I don’t post a lot of celebrity memoirs here, but I thought these were an interesting pair to compare and contrast. Similar but different…

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / May 2022)

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / May 2022)

This made me think of Rafqa Touma’s piece for The Guardian earlier this year, ‘Well-dressed and distressed: why sad young women are the latest book cover trend’.

An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie; design by Jack Smyth (Headline / April 2022)

The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight; design Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2022)

A very Saul Bass / Vertigo vibe to this.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel; design by Abby Weintraub (Knopf / April 2022)

I think this is possibly my favourite of the recent Emily St. John Mandel covers.

Sedating Elaine by Dawn Winter; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2022)

The endless possibilities of a banana and sharpie… (the cover of Come On Up was designed by the multi-talented Roman Muradov)

Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud; design by Jennifer Griffiths (McClelland & Stewart / May 2022)

The cover of the US edition was designed by Rachel Ake Kuech using a illustration by Grant Haffner. The difference between how Canada represents Canada and how the US represents Canada is…. interesting.

Big vertical light leaks might also be a thing… (Freedomland designed by Henry Sene Yee for Cornell University Press)

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / May 2022)

True Biz by Sara Novic; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2022)

Apparently this is Jack Smyth month on the blog…

You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead; design by Kelly Blair; illustration by Toby Leigh (Knopf / May 2022)

The cover of the UK edition, published by Doubleday, was designed by Irene Martinez:

I picked a lot of orange covers this month. I did say it was a thing.

The combination of pink and orange maybe a thing within the thingā€¦?

A speaking of pink and orange…

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Anna Morrison (Faber and Faber / May 2022)

The cover of the US edition, published by Atria, was designed by Laywan Kwan.

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Book Covers of Note, February 2020

Meh. February. At least it’s almost over (and the book covers are good).

The Bear by Andrew Krivak; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2020)

(I read an ARC of The Bear last year (full disclosure: the folks that pay me distribute Bellevue Literary Press in Canada), and haven’t really stopped talking about it since, so I may as well mention here too. It’s very sincere, and reminiscent of the kind of Cold War science fiction in which war and environmental catastrophe have led to the end of civilization. It is not dystopian though. It reads rather like beautiful melancholy fable. I liked it a lot.)

Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham; design Nicole Caputo (Catapult / February 2020

Losing Eden by Lucy Jones; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / February 2020)

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata; design by John Gall (Hanover Square Press / February 2020)

One for the meta-covers list (and does the use of Lydian on the cover of a book on the cover of book count as ironic?)

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co / February 2020)

The cover of the UK edition published by Picador was designed by Katie Tooke I believe (and if anyone can tell me who the did the illustration — based on traditional Norwegian folk art rosemaling — I would be grateful!)

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong; design by Na Kim (One World / February 2020)

The cover of UK edition, which Profile Books is publishing next month, was designed by Steve Panton:

Pallbearing Stories by Michael Melgaard; design by Alysia Shewchuk (House of Anansi / February 2020)

Rendang by Will Harris; design by David Pearson (Granta / February 2020)

A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes; design by Gill Heeley (Canongate / February 2020)

The cover of the US edition, published last year by Akashic Books, was designed by Christian Fuenfhausen

This Brilliant Darkness by Jeff Sharlet; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / February 2020)

Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote; design by Jennifer Carrow (Grand Central / February 2020)

Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / February 2020)

Whistleblower by Susan Fowler; design by Catherine Casalino (Viking / February 2020)

Nice type.

Weather by Jenny Offill; design by John Gall (Knopf / February 2020)

There haven’t been very many John Gall covers on the blog recently, so it’s a delight to post two in the same month. And this really is a most Gallian of John Gall covers.

The cover of the UK edition of Weather, published by Granta, was designed by Gray318

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Book Covers of Note April 2017

This edition of ‘book covers of note’ is brought to you entirely by Gray318 who designed the covers of all the books published this month. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but Jon did design FOUR of the covers on my list — all different, all brilliant. How no one has published a monograph of his work yet is beyond me. Anyway… This month’s post also includes covers by David Pearson, Erik Carter, Scott Richardson, Kimberly Glyder, Katie Tooke, Rachel Vale and more… 


Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou; design by Gray318 (Serpent’s Tail / April 2017)


England Your England by George Orwell; design by David Pearson (Penguin Modern Classics / March 2017)


The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey; design by Pete Adlington (Canongate / April 2017)


Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag; design by Luke Bird (Faber & Faber / April 2017)

And, just FYI, after 6 years at Faber & Faber, Luke has decided to set up his own studio should you wish to hire him (and on the basis of this cover alone, why wouldn’t you?).


The Good People by Hannah Kent; design by Rachel Vale (Picador / February 2017)


The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; art direction by Christopher Moisan; illustration by Patrik Svensson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / April 2017)

This is just the latest in a number of striking covers for The Handmaid’s Tale  rare bookseller and author Rebecca Romney recently compiled a list


The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas; design by Jenna Stempel; illustration Debra Cartwright (Balzer + Bray / February 2017)

The cover of the UK edition of The Hate U Give, published by Walker this month, was designed by Maria Soler.

It’s interesting that both designs have acrostic titles. I wonder if this was in the brief?  


Home and Away by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Fredrik Ekelund; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2017)

The cover of the British edition, published by Harvill Secker in November 2016, was designed by Matt Broughton. 


Let Go My Hand by Edward Docx; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / April 2017)


Literature Class by Julio CortĆ”zar; design by Rodrigo Corral and Zak Tebbal (New Directions / March 2017)


Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel; design by Erik Carter (New Directions /March 2017)


The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge; design by Will Staehle (Penguin / March 2017)


Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; design by C. S. Richardson (Penguin Canada / March 2017)

In the US, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have also published a new edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The cover — which owes a wee debt to Peter Mendelsund’s eye motif covers for the Schocken editions of Kafka (in my very humble opinion) — was designed by Mark Robinson.

You can see a few other recent covers for Nineteen Eighty Four here


Out of Line by Barbara Lynch; design by Delcan & Company; photography by George Baier IV (Atria / April 2017)


The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies; design by Zoe Norvell (Biblioasis / April 2017)


Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski; design by Mark Swan (Orenda / March 2017)


Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell; design by Sunra Thompson (McSweeney’s / March 2017)

The jacket has a really nice metallic finish in real life. The bright green cover under the jacket is also really nice. 


Sound System by Dave Randall; design by Jamie Keenan (Pluto Press / April 2017)


Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar; design by Allison Warner (Little Brown & Co. / March 2017)


Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic; design by Gray318 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / April 2017)


To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell; design by Gray318; robot/photograph by Marco Fernandes (Granta / April 2017)


The Teeth of the Comb & Other Stories by Osama Alomar; design by Erik Carter (New Directions / April 2017)


Us&Them by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; design by Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / April 2017)


Voices from the Jungle: Stories from the Calais Refugee Camp; design by Gray318 (Pluto Press / April 2017)


Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / March 2017)


White Tears by Hari Kunzru; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / March 2017)

The cover of the UK edition, published this month by Hamish Hamilton, was designed by Richard Bravery.

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