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Book Covers of Note, October 2025
Published October 28, 2025

Book Covers of Note, October 2025

Hey, I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you are. Here are my latest book covers of note…

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett; design by Stephanie Ross; cover art by Maria Guimarães

The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yoko Tawada; cover illustration by David Plunkert (New Directions / November 2025)

Casanova 20 by Davey Davis; design by Victoria Maxfield (Catapult / December 2025)

Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today by Naomi Alderman; design Chris Bentham (Fig Tree / November 2025)

The Extremities! by Samantha Kimmey; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Iowa Press / October 2025)

False War by Carlos Manuel Álvarez; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / October 2025)

Two back to back from Kimberly this month!

The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus; design by Alicia Tatone (Scribner / October 2025)

Happy Bad by Delaney Nolan; design by Adriana Tonello (Astra House / October 2025)

The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell; design by Beci Kelly (Doubleday / July 2025)

How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists by David Berry; design by Raymond Biesinger (Coach House Books / October 2025)

The cover of On Nostalgia by David Berry also designed by Raymond Biesinger featured on the blog back in July 2020.

And Raymond Biesinger’s own book, 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, was also published by Drawn & Quarterly this month.

How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Streeck; design by Daniel Benneworth-Gray (Verso / August 2025)

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan, translated by Jack Hargreaves; design by Rodrigo Corral; illustration by Klaus Kremmerz (Astra House / October 2025)

Jesus Christ Kinski by Benjamin Myers; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / October 2025)

Lucky Girl by Allie Tagle-Dokus; design by Beth Steidle (Tin House / November 2025)

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / October 2025)

On Booze by F. Scott Fitzgerald; design by Marian Bantjes (New Directions / November 2025)

The Salvage by Anbara Salam; design by Beth Steidle (Tin House / October 2025)

Sea Now by Eva Meijer, translated by Anne Thompson Melo; design by Jared Bartman (Two Lines Press / October 2025)

Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / October 2025)

Sister Creatures by Laura Venita Green; design by Jaya Nicely; photograph by Laura Makabresku (Unnamed Press / October 2025)

Super-Frog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Seb Agresti (Harvill / October 2025)

Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / October 2025)

The Tragedy of True Crime by John J. Lennon; design by Henry Sene Yee (Celadon Books / September 2025)

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)

Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum; design by Jaya Nicely (Creature / October 2025)

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn; design by Dan Jackson (Viking / November 2025)

The cover of the US edition of The Wax Child, published by New Directions at the end of September, was designed by Joan Wong.

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.

What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard; cover art by Shannon Cartier Lucy (Sceptre / April 2025)

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…

The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes; design by Rodrigo Corral and Adriana Tonello; photograph by Lisa Sorgini (One World / November 2025)

The World After Rain by Canisia Lubrin; design by Jennifer Griffiths (McClelland & Stewart / October 2025)

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Published September 21, 2011

Marian Bantjes | Creative Inspirations

Lynda.com have made a full-length documentary about graphic artist Marian Bantjes. Currently it’s only available to members, but here is a short trailer for the film:

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Published June 22, 2010

Intricate Beauty by Design

Graphic artist Marian Bantjes (whose typeface Restraint was used to great effect by Arthur Cherry for the cover of The Story of God by Michael Lodahlr) on individuality in design at TED:

(Via Nate Williams)

UPDATE: There is more about Arthur Cherry’s design for The Story of God at FaceOut Books.

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Published May 16, 2009

Something for the Weekend, May 15th, 2009

The Story of God — designer Arthur Cherry discusses his elegant design (which uses Marian Bantjes’ typeface Restraint to such brilliant effect) for the new edition of Michael Lodahlr’s book at FaceOut Books.

A Manifesto — Ted Genoways, the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, on the future of university presses and journals:

University presidents need to see what articulate ambassadors they have in their journals and presses, what tangible, enduring records they present of the variety and vigor of their sponsoring institutions…[G]reat universities extend well beyond the edges of their campuses. They reach out to the larger world, they challenge and engage the public, and the most effective and enduring way of doing so remains the written word.

HarperCollins Wants to Be Your Friend — Leon Neyfakh looks at publishers and social media in the New York Observer. Ostensibly it’s about the ever so anodyne HarperStudio, but more interesting stuff comes from the other people interviewed:

“I don’t know if it’s a direct response to the fact that publishing is in a very uncertain period right now, or if it’s just an idea whose time has finally arrived, but people right now are really interested in experimenting,” said Ami Greko, a 29-year-old digital marketing manager at Macmillan. “There seems to be a real sense of, ‘Let’s get creative—nothing is set in stone yet, so let’s just try a whole bunch of stuff.’”

Das Buch vom Jazz — The German-language version of The Book of Jazz, illustrated by Cliff Roberts ,  found in a used-bookstore by Today’s Inspiration’s Leif Peng. The black and white illustrations are wonderful.

Moaning Eton-boys & Middle-Aged Hackettes — A great defense of blogging by Nina Power at Infinite Thøught  (via PD Smith on Twitter):

Print media suffers from a lack of space; certainly it is selective, but it is also exclusive — all the stories that don’t get told, the injustices that get covered-up. We may feel we can ‘trust’ print journalists more than bloggers… but the sheer quantity and variety of information online allows for the exposure and discussion of things that might otherwise get ignored.

And finally…

The Tyranny of Data — The New York Times on Douglas Bowman‘s decision to leave his position as top visual designer at Google, and the  limitations of crowd-sourcing design:

“Getting virtually real-time feedback from users is incredibly powerful,” said Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Stanford Institute of Design. “But the feedback is not very rich in terms of the flavor, the texture and the nuance, which I think is a legitimate gripe among many designers.”

Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn said, “makes it very difficult to take bold leaps.”

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