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Book Covers of Note, June 2025
Published June 26, 2025

Book Covers of Note, June 2025

It’s been another busy month here, so apologies for the slightly scattered post. It includes a few covers that I missed earlier in early in the year, and a few other bits and pieces. I hope everyone is doing OK. Here are the covers…

Audition by Pip Adam; cover art by Leopold Adi Surya (Coffee House Press / June 2025)

It looks like this was actually the cover of the editions originally available in New Zealand and Australia in 2023, so apologies for being so late to it.

Bad Animals by Sarah Braunstein; design Oliver Munday (W. W. Norton / February 2025)

Bear Witness by Ross Halperin; design by David Litman (Liveright / May 2025)

They are obviously very, very different books, but the cover Bear Witness reminded me of the cover for Going Home by Tom Lamont designed by Jared Bartman published by Knopf earlier this year.

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan; design by Rachel Ake (Dial Press / May 2025)

Everybody Says It’s Everything by Xhenet Aliu; design Eli Mock (Random House / March 2025)

Flashlight by Susan Choi; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2025)

I had almost forgotten that I did a little post about sideways covers 10 years ago(!). It could be time for a new one?

Girls with Long Shadows by Tennessee Hill; design Robin Bilardello (Harper / May 2025)

Are green covers with pink type a thing now? There’s also the cover of All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari designed by Lisa Jager for Knopf Canada which came out in February…

The Island by Antigone Kefala; design by Sarah Schulte (Transit Books / June 2025)

Another (mostly) green cover, with some pink type here!

Sarah’s (also mostly green with some pink!) cover for Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi, published this month by Yale University Press, also caught my eye, but I couldn’t source a hi-res image for it in time for the post…

Kill Creatures by Rory Power; illustration by Kei-Ella Loewe; art direction by Liz Dresner (Delacorte Press / June 2025)

The Longest Way to Eat a Melon by Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross; design by Emily Mahon (Sarabande Books / June 2025)

Both this and the cover for Disappoint Me were featured in a New York Times piece about recent books that are part of a painting + bold sans-serif cover trend.

The Longest Way to Eat a Melon is also an addition to the yellow type trend. The cover of The Slip by Miriam Webster designed by Typography Studio, out next month in Australia from Aniko Press, hits both trends too… (Do paintings of animals count as a separate trend from painting of people?)

Misophonia by Dana Vowinckel; design by Jack Smyth (HarperVia / May 2025)

Participatory Culture Wars by Simone Driessen, Bethan Jones and Benjamin Litherland; design by Ashley Muehlbauer (University of Iowa Press / June 2025)

This made me think of transferring newspaper print with pink silly putty, which probably hasn’t been possible for decades. I am ancient and made of dust.

Spine Magazine has brought back its round-up of recent university press covers too if you’re interested.

The Pawn by Paco Cerdà; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / June 2025)

Rytual by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson; design by Design by Committee (Penguin Australia / May 2025)

Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli; design Elena Giavaldi (Zando / April 2025)

The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2025)

I think this cover was originally used for the Swedish edition so technically it is also from 2023. (Finger on the pulse over here… )

The Slip by Lucas Schaeffer; design by Jack Smyth (Simon & Schuster / June 2025)

Tank by Mark Urban; design by Chris Bentham (Penguin / June 2025)

I love the “does what it says on the tin” literalness of both the title and image here.

UnWorld by Jason Greene; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / June 2025)

Valencia by Michelle Tea; design by Megan Grace (Profile / June 2025)

Let me know if you recognize the photo / photographer and I’ll add the credit.

The photograph is by photographer Chloe Sherman from her project Renegades: San Francisco, the 1990s, which is now available as book from Hatje Cantz.

Weepers by Peter Mendelsund; design by Thom Colligan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2025)

This reminded me of the cover of The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane designed by Na Kim for FSG a few years ago (the colour palette of which is similar to a lot of Na’s paintings funnily enough!).

Peter Mendelsund‘s memoir/monograph Exhibitionist is available from Catapult this month too. I think Peter designed the cover for this one himself (with Corbusier inspired stencil type?).

The Washington Post recently toured Peter’s apartment and talked to him about the book.

Work Nights by Erica Peplin; design by Holly Ovenden (Gallery Books / June 2025)

This is giving me Claes Oldenburg vibes. (Is there someone who paints photorealistic donuts? There is probably is).

Are donut covers a thing? Can we make them a thing?

Piglet by Lottie Hazell; design Beci Kelly (Transworld / January 2024)

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Book Covers of Note, April 2025
Published April 22, 2025

Book Covers of Note, April 2025

Hey, I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Apologies for a slightly rushed post this month. It’s been kind of a busy time, and I’m travelling for work next week, so I’m sure I’ve missed a few covers and connections. I’ll try to catch up over the summer if/when things quieten down. Anyway… there are still lots of great covers in this month’s post — some from the usual suspects for sure, but also a few indies, a university press, a couple of covers from the UK and Ireland, and one from Canada…

Audition by Katie Kitamura; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / April 2025)

The cover of A Separation by Katie Kitamuria, designed by Jaya Miceli, was on my list of notable book covers back in 2017 (and featured on this list from 2020 that I’d forgotten I’d posted!)

Bad Nature by Ariel Courage; design by Emily Mahar (Henry Holt & Co. / April 2025)

Back in the Day by Oliver Lovrenski; design by Josie Staveley Taylor; photography by Valentin Fabre (Penguin Books / April 2025)

Barbara by Joni Murphy; design by Frances DiGiovanni and Rodrigo Corral (Astra House / March 2025)

If you missed it, Rodrigo Corral was recently profiled by Zachary Petit for Fast Company.

And, the cover of Animals by Joni Murphy, designed by Na Kim, was featured on my 2020 notable list. It’s an interesting contrast…

Big Chief by Jon Hickey; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / April 2025)

Crumb by Dan Nadel; design by Gregg Kulick (Scribner / April 2025)

The Eternal Dice by César Vallejo; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / April 2025)

The Fact Checker by Austin Kelley; cover illustration by Amber Day (Atlantic Monthly Press / April 2025)

Harriet Tubman in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen; design by Chelsea McGuckin (Galley Books / March 2025)

The Honditsch Cross by Ingeborg Bachmann; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / April 2025)

Peter Mendelsund also designed the cover of Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann for New Directions. It was on my notable list in 2019 (and on the aforementioned look back at the decade).

The Odyssey translated by Daniel Mendelsohn; design by Monograph (University of Chicago Press / April 2025)

I was reminded of Matt’s 2017 cover for David Ferry’s translations of the Aeneid from University of Chicago Press. It sticks in my mind at least partially for it’s use of Sandrine Nugue’s typeface Infini.

The Aeneid by Virgil (University of Chicago Press) Design by Matt Avery

Notes to John by Joan Didion; design John Gall; photograph by Annie Leibovitz (Knopf / April 2025)

The photo feels very appropriate given how Didion would probably have felt about this book being published.

Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt; design by Sarah Schulte (Knopf / April 2025)

Open Up by Thomas Morris; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / April 2025)

The Pretender by Jo Harkin; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / April 2025)

The cover of the US edition, published by Knopf this month, was designed by John Gall (the art is from Portrait of a Boy with a Falcon by 17th century Flemish painter Wallerant Vaillant, which is part of the Met’s collection in NYC if you’re curious)

This Room is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová; design by Matt Needle (Parthian Books / March 2025)

I love the bold movie-posterness of this design, but I also like to think it’s secretly the completes the cover for Mothers by Chris Power designed by Grace Han…

Small Ceremonies by Kyle Edwards; design by Kate Sinclair (McClelland & Stewart / April 2025)

This reminded me of another Grace Han cover, although the resemblance is similarly passing…

Florida by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / June 2018)

Super Gay Poems by Stephanie Burt; design by Jaya Miceli (Harvard University Press / April 2025)

Typefaces with dots are apparently a thing at the moment. The cover of Bad Friend by Tiffany Watt Smith from Faber, also out this month, uses type that has dots for counters too. Please let me know who the designer is and I’ll happily add the credit.

Tenterhoooks by Claire-Lise Kieffer; design by Jack Smyth (Banshee Press / February 2025)

Jack’s conversation with Steve Leard on the Cover Meeting podcast is really great if you haven’t listened to it yet.

Terrestrial by Joe Mungo Reed; design by Abby Weintraub (W.W. Norton / April 2025)

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Published December 19, 2023

Notable Book Covers of 2023

At the turn of the year, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshitification.” Although he was specifically describing the process of online services getting worse for users, it was hard not to see it everywhere in 2023.

In his annual look at the year’s best book covers for the New York Times, art director Matt Dorfman recounts a friend describing 2023 as a “year of survival”, a year of “no growth, no withering, just getting by.”

This year saw a centuries-old business contending with rounds of buyouts and layoffs, alongside an endless news cycle involving two brutal wars from which no authors, friends, enemies or strangers were immune from accountability for any unrehearsed sentiment they might voice in passing. Add to this the ongoing concern about how artificial intelligence will affect a business historically dependent upon human creativity — yet through it all, there was still the matter of making books, and their covers, to get on with.

I read Matt’s piece the same day I read an article by Kyle Chayka in the New Yorker about his search for an epochal term to “evoke the panicky incoherence of our lives of late.” The suggestions range from the bland ‘Long 2016,’ to the incredibly ominous-sounding ‘Chthulucene,’ the Lovecraftian ‘New Dark Age,’ and the frankly terrifying and plausible ‘Jackpot’ from William Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral.

This was the context of life and work in 2023.

Matt notes some designers found inspiration in the zeitgeist. He’s not wrong. But, ironically perhaps, I feel less optimistic about the overall picture than he does.

At the risk of repeating what I’ve written in the past couple of years, it’s like we’re stuck in a holding pattern, circling the same design ideas. Trends have stuck around. A lot of covers feel safe. Some of this was the books themselves. I’m not sure exactly how many celebrity memoirs is too many, but I’m pretty sure we reached that point and sailed right past it in 2023. No doubt some of it is sales and marketing departments sanding down all the edges and demanding the tried and true (see Zachary Petit’s alternative best of 2023 piece on killed covers for Fast Company). But I would not be surprised if it designers were just getting caught up in the churn — too many books, too many covers, and too much other stuff to worry about.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Rouge by Mona Awad; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / September 2023)
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; design by Regina Flath (Del Rey Books / July 2023)
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez; design by Donna Cheng (Hogarth / September 2023)

One of the themes of the year was nostalgia, which I’m sure can also be put down to the present being pretty fucking awful. It was apparent across almost all genres, including literary fiction, but nowhere more so than in the resurgent supernatural suspense and horror categories. There were creative stylistic mashups with retro vibes, along side fastidious Stranger Things-like homages to the 1980s and Stephen King.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward; design by Katie Klimowicz (Tor / August 2023)
The Only One Left by Riley Sager; design by Kaitlin Kall (Dutton / June 2023)
Come Closer by Sara Gran; design by Caroline Johnson (Soho Press / September 2023)

One genuinely pleasant surprise was the number of interesting covers from Canadian publishers this year. They’ve been quietly risk-averse in recent years, so it was nice to see a few bolder design choices getting approved. I was happy to see a Canadian cover was one of the top picks on Literary Hub’s (very, very long) list of the best covers of 2023.  

There were other things to cheer this year too.

The Lights by Ben Lerner; design by David Pearson (Granta / September 2023)
Total Reset by Sinéad Brady; design Steve Leard (HarperCollins / March 2023)
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney; design by Zoe Norvell (Biblioasis / November 2023)

Spine continued to give space to designers to talk about their work in a way I’ve never been able to do consistently here. You can find their 2023 cover picks here.

David Pearson started the Book Cover Review, a website for short reviews of book covers.

Zoe Norvell’s I Need A Book Cover, a resource for book cover inspiration as well as place for authors and publishers to connect with designers, also went live.

Steve Leard launched Cover Meeting, a podcast series of in-depth interviews with cover designers (including David and Zoe among others). As Mark Sinclair notes in his piece on book cover design this year for Creative Review, Steve’s conversations shed light on wider concerns in the industry as well as each designer’s individual process. Have a listen if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading.

The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer; design by Kate Sinclair (Random House Canada / May 2023)

Also designed by Kate Sinclair:

Landscapes by Christine Lai; design by Kate Sinclair (Doubleday Canada / May 2023)
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright; design by Kate Sinclair; art by Darek Grabus (McClelland & Stewart / September 2023)

The Annual Banquet of The Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard; design by John Gall (New Directions / December 2023)

I like John’s cover for Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, also published by New Directions, a lot too.

Bariloche by Andrés Neuman; design by Alban Fischer (Open Letter / March 2023)

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Close to Home by Michael Magee; design by Na Kim; photograph by Oumayma B. Tanfous (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2023)

Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen; design by Andrew Walters (Two Lines Press / June 2023)

Berlin by Bea Setton; design by Emily Mahon; cover image by Nataša Denić (Penguin Books / May 2023)

Also designed by Emily Mahon:

Lost Believers by Irina Zhorov; design by Emily Mahon (Scribner / August 2023)
Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch; design by Emily Mahon; illustration and lettering by Studio Martina Flor (Doubleday / July 2023)

B.F.F. by Christie Tate; design by Ben Wiseman (Avid Reader Press / February 2023)

Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado; design by Myunghee Kwon (Bloomsbury / March 2023)

Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor; design by Michel Vrana; photograph by Joe Cohen (Biblioasis / August 2023)

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll; design by Kaitlin Kall (Simon & Schuster / September 2023)

Brutes by Dizz Tate; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / February 2023)

Caret, Pilcrow and Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones; design by Jonathan Pelham (Faber / August 2023)

I also really liked Jonny’s cover design for the UK edition of Tremor by Teju Cole, published by Faber.

Cat Prince by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown / July 2023)

The Circle by Katherena Vermette; design by Jennifer Griffiths; art by KC Adams (Hamish Hamilton Canada / September 2023)

Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / May 2023)

Vengeance is Mine by Marie Ndiaye; design by Jack Smyth (Quercus Publishing / October 2023)
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / July 2023)
Mister Mister by Guy Gunaratne; design by Jack Smyth (Pantheon / October 2023)

The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2023)

The Details by Ia Genberg translated by Kira Josefsson; design Stephen Brayda; illustration Najeebah Al-Ghadban (Harpervia / August 2023)

A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / August 2023)

The Employees by Olga Ravn; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / February 2023)

Excavations by Hannah Michell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World / July 2023)

The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank; design by Annie Atkins (Penguin / May 2023)

Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith; design by Beth Steidle (Tin House / July 2023)

Good Men by Arnon Grunberg; design by Anna Jordan (Open Letter / May 2023)

Greek Lessons by Han Kang; design by Anna Kochman (Hogarth / April 2023)

Hangman by Maya Binyam; design by Alex Merto; art by Belkis Ayón (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)

Also designed by Alex Merto:

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova; design by Alex Merto (Zando / March 2023)
The Future, The Future by Adam Thirlwell; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2023)
Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra; design by Alex Merto (Astra House / November 2023)

Hope by Andrew Ridker; design by Tyler Comrie; photograph by Melissa Ann Pinney (Viking / July 2023)

Tyler Comrie’s cover for Time Without Keys by Ida Vitale, published by New Directions, is also very nice.

House Woman by Adorah Nworah; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2023)

I have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / February 2023)

The Illiterate by Ágota Kristóf; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / April 2023)

Also designed by Oliver Munday:

The Guest by Emma Cline; design by Oliver Munday (Random House / May 2023)
Life on Delay by John Hendrikson; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / January 2023)

Island City by Laura Adamczyk; design by Jennifer Heuer (FSG Originals / March 2023)

The Joy of Consent by Manon Garcia; design by Jaya Miceli (Belknap Press / October 2023)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin; design Jaya Miceli; art by Anna Weyant (Scribner / February 2023)
The New Life by Tom Crewe; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / January 2023)

Julia by Sandra Newman; design by Luke Bird (Mariner / October 2023)

Also designed by Luke Bird:


Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan; design by Luke Bird (Footnote Press / June 2023)
Hangman by Maya Binyam; design by Luke Bird (Pushkin Press / August 2023)

The Last Bookseller by Gary Goodman; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Minnesota Press / October 2023)

The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / July 2023)

The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / September 2023)

Lucky Dogs by Helen Schulman; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Christopher Brand (Knopf / June 2023)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

Disruptions by Steven Millhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Alfred A. Knopf / August 2023)
The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang; design by Janet Hansen (Public Space Books / May 2023)

Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / May 2023)

Poverty by Matthew Desmond; design by Christopher Brand (Crown / March 2023)

Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache; design by Dan Mogford; lettering by Martin Naumann (Vintage / August 2023)

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey; design by Mumtaz Mustafa; art by Sari Shryack (William Morrow & Co / January 2023)

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter; design by Natalia Olbinski; art by Angela Faustina (Scribner / July 2023)

The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / July 2023)

Shy by Max Porter; design by Carlos Esparza (Graywolf / May 2023)

Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly; design by Jesse Reed; art by Jesse Draxler (Rose Books / July 2023)

Sublunar by Harald Voetmann; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / August 2023)

Also designed by Jamie Keenan:

The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson; design by Jamie Keenan (Granta / October 2023)
Dr. No by Percival Everett; design by Jamie Keenan (Influx Press / March 2023)

The Sullivanians by Alexander Stille; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2023)

Also designed by June Park:

The Upstairs Delicatessen by Dwight Garner; design June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2023)
Couplets by Maggie Millner; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2023)

To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher; design by Jo Thomson (Fourth Estate / March 2023)

Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman; design by Pete Garceau (PublicAffairs / January 2023)

Also designed by Pete Garceau:

Deadline by Jill Lepore; design by Pete Garceau (Liveright Books / August 2023)
Going Infinite by Michael Lewis; design by Pete Garceau (W. W. Norton / October 2023)

The Vunerables by Sigrid Nunez; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / November 2023)

Also designed by Lauren Peter-Collaer:

What Napoleon Could Not Do by Dk Nnuro; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / February 2023)
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / August 2023)

While Supplies Last by Anita Lahey; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / April 2023)

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Published July 28, 2023

Book Covers of Note, July 2023

Even though it’s still just about July — a supposedly “quiet” month in publishing — I’m running late once again. Hopefully everyone is on vacation and won’t notice that it’s basically August already and I am here sliding in under the wire. There are some great covers this month though. A bit of collage, some really nice typography, and lots of pink and red. Enjoy!

The Absolutes by Molly Dektar; design by Yeon Kim (Mariner / July 2023)

I like this cover a lot, but I’m shamelessly stealing it from Lit Hub’s most recent book cover round-up (a benefit of being last to post!), so I hope the design credit is correct because I couldn’t verify it before posting!

Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen; design by Andrew Walters (Two Lines Press / June 2023)

I had this noted as down as July cover, but the book was actually released in June. The cover of the Two Lines Press edition of Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen has also been re-designed to match.

The Black Eden by Richard T. Kelly; design by Robbie Porter (Faber & Faber / July 2023)

Cat Prince by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown / July 2023)

Jon’s design for Michael’s previous book Boy Friends, which features an illustration by Nathaniel Russell, was on last year’s notable book cover list.

The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2023)

Counterweight by Djuna; design by Tal Goretsky (Pantheon / July 2023)

Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch; design by Emily Mahon; illustration and lettering by Studio Martina Flor (Doubleday / July 2023)

Excavations by Hannah Michell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World / July 2023)

This reminded me of the 2017 cover of Smoke by Dan Vyleta designed by Mark Abrams with an illustration by the late Colombian artist Alejandro García Restrepo who passed away last month.

The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / July 2023)

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery; design by Katya Mezhibovskaya (Bloomsbury / July 2023)

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter; design by Natalia Olbinski; art by Angela Faustina (Scribner / July 2023)

I love pretty much everything about this cover.

Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson; design by Math Monahan (Simon & Schuster / July 2023)

The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / July 2023)

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; design by Regina Flath (Del Rey Books / July 2023)

I think this delivers just about everything you want from a horror / thriller cover.

Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly; design by Jesse Reed; art by Jesse Draxler (Rose Books / July 2023)

The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy; design by Dave Litman (Viking / July 2023)

A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / July 2023)

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Published December 14, 2021

Notable Book Covers of 2021

Earlier this year, a Canadian magazine asked me what the latest trends in book cover design were. I don’t think I had a very satisfactory answer. 2021 felt very much like a continuation of 2020, which itself felt like a year on hold.

The trends that came to mind were not exactly new. In no particular order: big faces (big sunglasses!); cropped faces; hands; mouths; postmodern typefaces;1 big skies; rainbows; gradients; the colour orange; psychedelia; collage; contemporary painting.

A lot was made of “blob” covers this year. I’m not sure that anything has really changed since Vulture published this article about “blocky” covers in 2019. They seemed like much the same thing.

Design is about the constraints and, as it turns out, the constraints around designing commercial literary fiction covers that have to work just as well online as in bookstores can lead to similar design solutions — large, legible type, and bright, abstract backgrounds. 2 The surprising thing is not that a few covers look the same when you squint; it’s that more of them don’t.  

There were a lot of good covers (that didn’t look alike) in 2021. LitHub posted 101 of them. Still, it didn’t exactly feel like a vintage year.

Do I say that every December? Possibly.

A few years ago I worried that covers were moving in a more conservative direction, particularly at the big publishers. I’m not sure this has come to pass, at least not in the US. There are plenty of covers from the big, prestigious American literary imprints in this year’s list, as there were last year, and every year before that. 

There are fewer covers from the UK in this year’s list than in previous years though, and I feel less confident about the situation there. From a distance, things seem a little sedate. I may be mistaken. It’s quite possible I haven’t see enough covers — or perhaps enough of the right ones — from British publishers to get a good sense of the overall picture.3

It would not be a surprise, however, if publishers were feeling a little risk-averse at the moment. We are two years into a global pandemic, experiencing a major supply chain issues, and living through a seemingly endless series of sociopolitical crises.

Nor would it be a surprise if designers were personally feeling the effects too — I’m not sure we are talking about this enough, and I’m not sure I know how to.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot. Here are this year’s book covers of note…

After the Sun by Jonas Eika; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer; art by Dorian Legret (Riverhead / August 2021)

Amoralman by Derek Delgaudio; design by John Gall (Knopf / March 2021)

Also designed by John Gall:

Animal by Lisa Taddeo; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / June 2021)

Greg Heinimann talked to Creative Review about his work in April.

Are You Enjoying? by Mira Sethi; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2021)

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint; design by Joanne O’Neill (Flatiron Books / May 2021)

Also designed by Joanne O’Neill:

he Art of Wearing a Trench Coat by Sergi Pàmies; design by Arsh Raziuddin and Oliver Munday (Other Press / March 2021)

The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy; design by Laywan Kwan (Atria / May 2021)

Black Village by Lutz Bassmann; design by Anne Jordan (Open Letter / December 2021)

A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris; design by Gregg Kulick (Little Brown and Company / September 2021)

Come On Up by Jordi Nopca; design by Roman Muradov (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2021)

Consent by Vanessa Springora; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Rozenn Le Gall (Harpervia / February 2021)

Stephen Brayda talked about his design for Consent with Spine Magazine.

Also designed by Stephen Brayda:

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen; design by Na Kim (FSG / January 2021)

Na Kim talked to PRINT about her career and the designs for the Ditlevsen series in February. If, like me, you were wondering about typeface on the covers, it’s Prophet from Dinamo apparently.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner; design by Na Kim (Knopf / April 2021)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Jeremy Miranda (Scribner / August 2021)

Dead Souls by Sam Riviere; design by Jamie Keenan; paper engineering and photography by Gina Rudd (Weidenfeld & Nicholson / May 2021)

Also designed by Mr. Keenan:

The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / February 2021)

Also designed by Alex Merto:

Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters; design by Rachel Ake Keuch (One World / January 2021)

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller; design by Anna Kochman; illustration by Mike McQuade (One World / January 2021)

Double Trio by Nathaniel Mackey; design by Rodrigo Corral and Boyang Xia (New Directions / April 2021)

Falling by T. J. Newman; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / July 2021)

Also designed by David Litman:

Fight Night by Mirian Toews; design by Patti Ratchford; illustration by Christina Zimpel (Bloomsbury / October 2021)

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor; design by Luke Bird (Daunt Books / June 2021)

Also designed by Luke Bird:

Foucault in Warsaw by; design Daniel Benneworth-Gray (Open Letter / June 2021)

God of Mercy by Okezie Nwọka; design Sara Wood (Astra House / November 2021)

Sara Wood talked about her design for God of Mercy with Spine Magazine.

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / October 2021)

July by Kathleen Ossip; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / June 2021)

Like Me by Hayley Phelan; design Emma Dolan (Doubleday Canada / July 2021)

Living in Data by Jer Thorp; design by Rodrigo Corral; art by Andrew Kuo (MCD / May 2021)

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / November 2021)

Matrix by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / September 2021)

Mona by Pola Oloixarac; design by Thomas Colligan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / March 2021)

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander; design by Jack Smyth (Picador / February 2021)

Jack Smyth talked to Totally Dublin about his work earlier this year.

Also designed by Jack Smyth:

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden; design by Gill Heeley (Canongate / January 2021)

Nectarine by Chad Campbell; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / May 2021)

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder; design by Emily Mahon (Doubleday / July 2021)

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood; design Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead Books / February 2021)

Also designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer:

O by Steven Carroll; design by Gray318 (HarperCollins Australia / February 2021)

Also designed by Gray318:

If you’re wondering about the Super-Seventies Sally Rooney typeface, it is Ronda designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese (I only know because I asked).

Once More With Feeling by Sophie McCreesh; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Anchor Canada / August 2021)

On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason; design Zoe Norvell (Open Letter / March 2021)

Outlawed by Anna North; design by Rachel Willey (Bloomsbury / January 2021)

Paradise by Lizzie Johnson; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / August 2021)

La Part des Chiens by Marcus Malte; design by David Pearson (Editions Zulma / April 2021)

Also designed by David Pearson:

The Plague by Albert Camus; design by Sunra Thompson (Knopf / November 2021)

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz; design by Anne Twomey (Celadon Books / May 2021)

Rabbit Island by Elvira Navarro; design by Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / February 2021)

Gabriele Wilson talked about her cover design for Rabbit Island with Spine Magazine.

Gabriele Wilson is doing some lovely work for Two Lines Press:

Red Island House by Andrea Lee; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / March 2021)

The Removed by Brandon Hobson; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Ecco / February 2021)

The Shimmering State by Meredith Westgate; design Chelsea McGuckin (Atria / August 2021)

A Shock by Keith Ridgway; design by Nathan Burton (Picador / June 2021)

Summerwater by Sarah Moss; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2021)

Virtue by Hermione Hoby; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead / July 2021)

This Weightless World by Adam Soto; design by Tyler Comrie (Astra House / November 2021)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot.

  1. I am not convinced that the term “postmodern” quite captures what I mean here (and/or worse, implies something different in the context of typography), but it’s the best I’ve got. I’m not talking about the kind of experimental typography you might associate with the likes of Wim Crouwel or Emigre, or the aesthetic of someone like David Carson. What I am trying to get at is idiosyncratic type that purposely exaggerates or plays with letterforms, and doesn’t conform to function-first modernism. To my mind, this would include some typefaces from the 1960s and 70s, as well as some more contemporary type. In a sense what I am describing is display faces — and I think the eclectic, innovative use of type in Victorian advertising might be an inspiration to designers here — but I don’t think it is just about size. ↩
  2. an alternative solution is what Australian designer John Durham, AKA Design by Committee, memorably referred to as the “lost dog poster school of cover design”. ↩
  3. I don’t want to jinx it, but are Canadian covers getting more adventurous? ↩
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Published October 26, 2021

Book Covers of Note, October 2021

This will be the last of the monthly cover round-ups for 2021 because I have to turn my attention to the year as a whole, but there are some really top-notch covers in this month’s post so it feels like a good place leave off…

Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin; design by David Pearson (Pluto Press / October 2021)

Bewilderment by Richard Powers; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Random House Canada / October 2021)

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall; design by Jo Walker (Faber & Faber / October 2021)

Concepcion by Albert Samaha; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / October 2021)

Cultish by Amanda Montell; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper Wave / June 2021)

Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated by Margaret Jull Costa; design Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / October 2021)

God of Mercy by Okezie Nwọka; design Sara Wood (Astra House / November 2021)

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / October 2021)

The cover of the UK edition, publishing next year I believe, was designed by Jack Smyth:

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull / October 2021)

I was reminded of the cover of The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner designed by Gregg Kulick from what seems like an age ago (2013 I think?) . It’s very possible I have been doing this for too long…

Machete by Tomás Q. Morín; design by Braulio Amado (Knopf / October 2021)

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / November 2021)

This seems like a reasonable excuse to post Peter Mendelsund’s cover designs for the two previous novels by Tom McCarthy…

  • Satin Island by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / February 2015)

The cover of the UK edition of The Making of Incarnation, published last month by Jonathan Cape, was designed by Mario de Meyer:

My Best Mistake by Terry O’Reilly; design by David Gee (HarperCollins Canada / October 2021)

North by Brad Kessler; design by David Drummond (Harry N. Abrams / October 2021)

Two Canadian designers doing the big magical sky thing to great effect!

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino; design by Joanne O’Neill; art by Paul Mann (Harper / November 2021)

Joanne O’Neill also designed the cover of the mass market paperback edition released earlier this year.

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit; design by Gray318 (Viking / October 2021)

The Third Unconsciousness by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi; design by Erik Carter (Verso / October 2021)

I love that the cover had to include “Bifo” in inverted commas.

Virtue by Hermione Hoby; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead / July 2021)

This Weightless World by Adam Soto; design by Tyler Comrie (Astra House / November 2021)

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Published February 26, 2021

Book Covers of Note, February 2021

A bit of a bumper post this month with a ton great covers, lots of old friends, a couple of designers that are new to me, and maybe an early contender (or two) for the ‘best of the year’ list.

As You Were by David Tromblay; design by Matthew Revert (Akashic / February 2021)

Benjamin’s Crossing by Jay Parini; design by Perry De La Vega (Anchor / February 2021)

Britain Alone by Philip Stevens; design by Johnny Pelham (Faber & Faber / January 2021)

Cigarette Nation by Daniel J. Robinson; design by David Drummond (McGill Queens University Press / February 2021)

I haven’t posted enough of David’s covers lately. They are always fun. I was struggling to think what this one reminded me of. I’m wondering if it’s maybe Raymond Hawkey’s black and white cover designs for Len Deighton? Or something from Pelican / Penguin in the 1970s?

Come On Up by Jordi Nopca; design by Roman Muradov (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2021)

Comic Timing by Holly Pester; design by David Pearson (Granta / February 2021)

The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / February 2021)

Gerta by Kateřina Tučková; design by Kimberly Glyder (Amazon Crossing / February 2021)

A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel; design by Henry Sene Yee (Tordotcom / February 2021)

The cover of the UK edition publishing early next month was designed by Jess Hart.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown and Co. / February 2021)

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander; design by Jack Smyth (Picador / February 2021)

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood; design Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead Books / February 2021)

The cover of the UK edition, published this month by Bloomsbury, was designed by Greg Heinimann.

Rachel Willey’s design for Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy is still one of my favourite covers of recent years (hard to believe it is from 2017!).

O by Steven Carroll; design by Gray318 (HarperCollins Australia / February 2021)

100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell; design by Na Kim (MCD / February 2021)

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson; design by Gray318; photographs by Campbell Addy and Regan Cameron (Viking / February 2021)

Rabbit Island by Elvira Navarro; design by Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / February 2021)

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott; design by Na Kim; art by Kate MccGwire (FSG Originals / February 2021)

The Removed by Brandon Hobson; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Ecco / February 2021)

The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniz Iczkovits; design by Janet Hansen; illustration by The High Road (Schocken Books / February 2021)

What would you call this background colour? Light brown? Dark beige? Anyway, it seems to be a thing. We could probably include As You Were cover here too, although it doesn’t have the red-orange accent colour.

The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec; design by Adam Auerbach (Ace Books / February 2021)

Your Story, My Story by Connie Palmen; design by Kimberly Glyder (Amazon Crossing / January 2021)

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Published December 18, 2020

Notable Book Covers of 2020

I didn’t blog much this year. It felt strange to be posting about something as trivial as book covers during a deadly pandemic. 2020 has been a tough year. I feel lucky that my family are safe and well, and I have kept my job and my health. I know others have not been so fortunate.

It has been hard.

I haven’t read much and I’ve struggled to keep track of new work. Toronto has been in lockdown for most of 2020. Browsing bookstores hasn’t been possible, and I didn’t spend as much time as usual trawling for covers online. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of covers in this year’s post are featured here for the first time.

Looking back at last year’s post, I was apparently feeling gloomy about the state of things in 2019 too.1 If I remember correctly, I was — in the midst of everything — trying to get through sales conference, wrap up a big project before the holidays, and feeling more than a little stressed. Somehow I still managed to write a little bit about the trends I was seeing. A few things — painterly covers for example — seem to have continued into 2020. Lydian certainly hasn’t gone away. It felt so common, in fact, I stopped keeping track of individual examples. On the other hand, I did see less Avant Garde for which I am quietly grateful (although I’m not sure that’s a popular sentiment).

At The Literary Hub, Emily Temple declared 2020 to be “the year of enormous pink lady faces on book covers.” While at Spine Magazine, Viki Hendy collected together examples of covers with type around the edges. I don’t know that I have a lot to add that. There were a few new meta, books on book covers this year, which is always a delight. And I think perhaps collage might be having a moment too, which is fun. Although we may be overdoing the half-face compositions.

  • Suppose A Sentence by Brian Dillon; design by Katy Homans; art by John Stezaker (NYRB / September 2020)
  • Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design by Jaya Miceli; collage by Toon Joosen (Scribner / January 2019)
  • The Lightness by Emily Temple; design by Ploy Siripant; art by Beth Hoeckel (William Morrow / June 2020)

There is, of course, a lag. Trends always bleed over from one year to the next. One of this year’s “big books”, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which featured a bright and bold cover designed by Vi-An Nguyen, was published in the US on December 31, 2019. A lot of 2020 books have been delayed until 2021. But I wonder how the changes in the way we work and consume brought on by the pandemic — designing in isolation for an audience that is now browsing predominantly online — will change things in the next couple of years. Will we see more experimentation or less? Will there be demand for beautiful tactile objects, or will we more fully embrace digital reading experiences? There’s a lot to ponder…

Anyway, thanks to all the folks who have supported the Casual Op this year and encouraged me to keep it going. I’m sorry that I have not responded to all the emails I have received. I’m going to try to be a bit better with that in future. Hopefully there have been some silver linings for you in 2020, and you can still find some joy in a few good book covers…

Afterland by Lauren Beukes; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / July 2020)

Also designed by Lauren Wakefield:

The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic; design by Jack Smyth (Open Letter / November 2020)

Also designed by Jack Smyth:

All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui; design by Holly Ovenden (Viking / August 2020)

Also designed by Holly Ovenden:

  • Blue Ticket by Sophie MacIntosh; design by Holly Ovenden (Hamish Hamilton / August 2020)
  • Belladonna by Anbara Salam; design Holly Ovenden (Penguin / August 2020)

Analogia by George Dyson; design by Tom Etherington; illustration by Andy Bridge (Allen Lane / August 2020)

Also designed by Tom Etherington:

Anger by Barbara H. Rosenwein; design by Alex Kirby (Yale University Press / July 2020)

Also designed by Alex Kirby:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu; design by Jaya Miceli (W. W. Norton / January 2020)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

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

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

Nicole talks about book covers and her design process in this video for Belletrist from earlier this year.

The Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Grady McFerrin (Ecco / May 2020)

Also designed by Allison Saltzman:

Carry by Toni Jensen; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Carmi Grau (Ballantine / September 2020)

Also designed by Emily Mahon:

Cesare by Jerome Charyn; design by Elsa Mathern (No Exit Press / November 2020)

Companions by Katie M. Flynn; design by Laywan Kwan (Scout Press / March 2020)

The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2020)

You can find a recent interview with Peter at InsideHook, and he has a big new book out called The Look of the Book with David J. Alworth.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / August 2020)

Also designed by Grace Han:

Los Falcón by Melissa Rivero; design by Adalis Martinez (Vintage Espanol / April 2020)

Sadly, Adalis unexpectedly passed away in July 2020. I only knew Adalis through her work, but she is such a huge a loss to our community. There is a GoFundMe page if you wish to donate to her family.

Also designed by Adalis Martinez:

  • losi by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)
  • Dominicana by Angie Cruz’ design by Adalis Martinez (Flatiron / August 2020)
  • Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar; design by Adalis Martinez (Catapult / February 2021)

Figure It Out by Wayne Koestenbaum; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / May 2020)

Also designed by Michael Salu:

The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / October 2020)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor; design Jamie Keenan (New Directions / March 2020)

Also designed by Jamie Keenan:

Hysteria by Jessica Gross; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / August 2020)

Also designed by Jaya Nicely:

  • A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / December 2020)
  • Vagablonde by Anna Dorn; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / May 2020)

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / October 2020)

The Hype Machine by Sinan Aral; design by Steve Leard (HarperCollins / September 2020)

Indelicacy by Amina Cain; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2020)

Also designed by June Park:

  • The Family Clause by Jonas Hassen Khemiri; design by June Park (FSG / August 2020)
  • Miss Aluminum by Susanna Moore; design by June Park (FSG / April 2020)
  • The Town by Shaun Prescott; design by June Park (FSG / February 2020)

Insomnia by John Kinsella; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / November 2020)

Also designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson:

Lakewood by Megan Giddings; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Yulia Bas (Amistad / March 2020)

Also designed by Stephen Brayda:

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford; design by Lucy Kim; photograph by Pari Dukovic (Little Brown & Co / July 2020)

Also designed by Lucy Kim:

Ledger by Jane Hirshfield; design by John Gall (Knopf / March 2020)

Also designed by John Gall:

You can find a short interview with John in which he discusses his cover for Red Pill at Bear Books, and you can read about his design process for Weather by Jenny Offill at Spine Magazine.

The Light Ages by Seb Falk; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / September 2020)

Is it just me, or were star charts on book covers a bit of thing this year?

Life of a Klansman; design by Rodrigo Corral; illustration by Matt Buck (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / August 2020)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

  • Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / January 2020)
  • Kraft by Jonas Lüscher; design by Rodrigo Corral (FSG / November 2020)
  • Lake Life by David James Poissant; design by Rodrigo Corral; photograph by Frederick Broden (Simon & Schuster / July 2020)

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin; design by Na Kim (Riverhead / May 2020)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2020)

Moss by Klaus Modick; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / August 2020)

Alban recently talked to the folks at Faceout Books about his design for Moss, and you can read about his design process for Four By Four by Sara Mesa at Spine Magazine.

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

  • The Clerk by Guillermo Saccomanno; design by Alban Fischer (Open Letter Books / September 2020)
  • White Blood by Kiki Petrosino; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / May 2020)
  • Four by Four by Sara Mesa; design by Alban Fischer (Open Letter / May 2020)

Natural History by Carlos Fonseca; design by Pablo Delcan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / July 2020)

Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell; design by Matthew Young; art by Joe Webb (Granta / April 2020)

Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina; design by Jude Landry (McSweeney’s / June 2020)

Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas; design by Kelly Winton (Counterpoint / January 2020)

On the Road by Jack Kerouac; design by Moker Ontwerp (De Bezige Bij / July 2020)

The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell; design by Stephanie Ross (Penguin Press / July 2020)

You can read about Stephanie’s design process for The Party Upstairs at Spine Magazine.

Pew by Catherine Lacey; design by Luke Bird (Granta / May 2020)

Also designed by Luke Bird:

Prosper’s Demon by K. J. Parker; design by Christine Foltzer; art by Sam Weber (Tor / January 2020)

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue; design by Sara Wood (Little Brown & Co / July 2020)

Also designed by Sara Wood:

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

Also designed by David Pearson:

  • Cover design by David Pearson and original lettering by Ken Garland

Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson; design by David Litman (Soho Press / July 2020)

Also designed by David Litman:

  • The New American by Micheline Aharonian Marcom; design Dave Litman (Simon & Schuster / August 2020)
  • We Inherit What the Fires Left by William Evans; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / March 2020)

Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran; design Henry Sene Yee (Flatiron Books / April 2020)

Also designed by Henry Sene Yee

Soot by Dan Vyleta; design by Mark Swan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson / February 2020)

The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter; design Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / November 2020)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

  • Antkind by Charlie Kaufman; design by Tyler Comrie (Random House / July 2020)
  • American Poison by Eduardo Porter; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / March 2020)
  • A Burning by Megha Majumdar; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / June 2020)

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner; design by Gray318 (Granta / September 2020)

Also designed by Gray318:

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

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey; design Sinem Erkas (Serpent’s Tail / February 2020)

You can read about Sinem’s design process for Topic of Conversation at Spine Magazine.

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith; design by  Suzanne Dean; photograph Marta Bevacqua (Jonathan Cape / January 2020)

Also designed by Suzanne Dean:

  • Sisters by Daisy Johnson; design by Suzanne Dean; photograph Simon Kerola (Jonathan Cape / August 2020)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / June 2020)

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

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; design by Kimberly Glyder (Scribner / January 2020)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

  1. For those of you that don’t know, the name of the blog comes from a joke about my general lack of enthusiasm for anything. ↩
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Published January 24, 2020

The Decade in Book Covers

There is a bit of story to this post. The short version is that I started it in 2018 to celebrate 10 years of the blog. When that deadline went whooshing past, I thought I would rework it for the end of 2019 as a look back at the decade. Now in 2020, with the risk of another deadline coming and going before I get it exactly right, I am just going to post this as it is — a collection of covers from the past 10 years1 that I quite like!

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, design by Will Staehle (Little Brown & Co. / July 2010)

Ethics of Interrogation by Michael Skerker, designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2010)

Filthy English by Peter Silverton, design by Dan Mogford (Portobello / October 2010)

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, designed by Roberto de Vicq (Random House / 2010)

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, design by David Pearson (Picador / December 2010)

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, designed by Rodrigo Corral Design (Random House / September 2010)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; design by Barbara deWilde (Knopf / June 2010)

Amerika by Franz Kafka, design by Peter Mendelsund (Schocken / August 2011)

Adventures in the Orgasmatron by Christopher Turner; design by Marina Drukman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux June 2011)

Fever by Sonia Shah; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / June 2011)

The First Husband by Laura Dave, designed by Jaya Miceli (Penguin / May 2011)

The Information by James Gleick, designed by Peter Mendelsund (Pantheon March 2011)

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi design by Helen Yentus with Jason Booher (Riverhead / September 2011)

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, design by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead Books / May 2011)

After Freud Left edited by John Burnham; designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2012)

The Dubliners by James Joyce; design by Apfel Zet (Penguin / May 2012)

Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G. Wilson; design by  Rodrigo Corrall, hand-lettering by Jennifer Carrow, photograph by Simon Lee (FSG March 2012)

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / January 2012)

Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel by Shalom Auslander; design by John Gall (Riverhead / January 2012)

May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes; designed by Alison Forner (Viking / September 2012)

NW by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / September 2012)

First Novel by Nicholas Royle; design by Suzanne Dean; photography Stephen Banks (Cape / February 2013)

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; design by Charlotte Strick (Scribner / April 2013)

The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster; design by David A. Gee (Verso September 2013)

Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis; design by Jamie Keenan (Vintage / May 2013)

Middle C by William Gass; Design by Gabriele Wilson (Knopf / March 2013)

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; design by David Pearson (Penguin / January 2013)

The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot; design by Jamie Keenan (Liveright Classics / September 2013)

What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam; design by Jennifer Heuer (Riverhead / March 2013)

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Knopf / March 2014)

The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon / February 2014)

California by Edan Lepucki; design Julianna Lee (Little Brown & Co. / July 2014)

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Bryan Nash Gill (Ecco / June 2014)

Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Rizon Parein(Doubleday / September 2014)

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / February 2014)

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / January 2014)

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee; design by Helen Yentus; lettering Jason Booher (Riverhead / January 2014)

Your Face in Mine by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Riverhead / August 2014)

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / August 2015)

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / November 2015)

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; design by Justine Anweiler; photography Jonathan Simpson (Picador UK / September 2015)

Motorcycles I’ve Loved by Lily Brooks-Dalton; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / April 2015)

Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; design by Anne Twomey (Twelve Books / January 2015)

One Day in the Life of the English Language by Frank L. Cioffi; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / March 2015)

Weathering by Lucy Wood; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / January 2015)

The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / April 2015)

Addlands by Tom Bullough; design by Jenny Grigg (Granta / June 2016)

The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / January 2016)

Dialogue by Robert McKee; design by Catherine Casalino (Twelve Books / July 2016)

How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / May 2016)

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / May 2016)

Moonglow by Michael Chabon; design by Adalis Martinez (Harper / November 2016)

The Start of Something by Stuart Dybek; design Suzanne Dean; cover art by Marion de Man (Jonathan Cape / November 2016) 

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel; design by Allison Colpoys (Scribe / August 2016)

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue design by Kimberly Glyder (Little, Brown & Co. / September 2016)

The Age of Perpetual Light by Josh Weil; design by Nick Misani (Grove Press / September 2017)

All We Saw by Anne Michaels; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Jouke Bos (Knopf / October 2017)

Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly; design by Alex Merto; photograph by Gregory Reid (W.W. Norton / December 2017)

Jerzy by Jerome Charyn; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2017)

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / May 2017)

A Separation by Katie Kitamura; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / February 2017)

Virgin and Other Stories by April Ayers Lawson; design by James Paul Jones (Granta / January 2017)

We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Viking / August 2017)

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / May 2018)

Cherry by Nico Walker; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / August 2018)

The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin; design by Rachel Willey (Henry Holt / April 2018)

Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2018)

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead Books / April 2018)

Liveblog by Megan Boyle; design by Nicole Caputo (Tyrant Books / September 2018)

There There by Tommy Orange; design by Suzanne Dean; art by Bryn Perrott (Harvill Secker / July 2018)

Aug 9 —  Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

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Published December 11, 2019

Notable Book Covers of 2019

2019 has felt interminable. It has also felt like there are never enough hours in the day to keep up. You can’t talk to me about TV shows or movies. I haven’t seen any.

When it comes to books, I’m fortunate enough to work in the industry. But what hope do casual readers have of finding the good stuff when the same few titles dominate the conversation and there is so much else competing for their attention?

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid were inescapable this year.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Caroline Teagle Johnson (Ballantine / March 2019)
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / March 2019)

Daisy Jones and the Six had a glamorous, louche 1970s look. The US and UK editions, designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson and Lauren Wakefield respectively, took slightly different directions with the type, but the photograph (a stock image apparently) felt ideally suited to social media.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; design by Noma Bar (Chatto & Windus / September 2019)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; art direction by Christopher Moisan; illustration by Patrik Svensson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / April 2017)

The Testaments was everywhere and, like the recent Vintage Classics reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale, the cover illustration was unmistakably by Noma Bar. We live in an age where every cult movie and TV show gets a ‘minimalist’ poster now, and I found that The Testaments looked too familiar for me to find it engaging. It didn’t help that the cover of the 2017 US reissue of the The Handmaid’s Tale by Swedish illustrator by Patrik Svenson had already featured a similar 3/4s silhouette. Nevertheless, it was perhaps a bolder cover choice than I’m giving it credit for. If nothing else, it showed that bright green on book covers — once cursed and reviled — is suddenly all the rage!

In terms of trends, 2019 felt more like a continuation of previous years rather than a break with the past. There was a kind of conservatism to a lot of the covers I saw. My sense was that highly polished designs that looked comfortingly familiar were being approved over riskier ones that stood out from the crowd. The most interesting covers often came from small publishers, especially New Directions who seem to be giving a bit more creative license to the designers they work with (some of whom have 9-5s at much bigger publishers!).

Big centred blocks of utilitarian white type over elaborate backgrounds continued to be a mainstay. It’s the book cover as poster, and it works at any size, so I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

Handwriting and hand-lettering remained popular too, although my sense is that enthusiasm is starting to wane as publishers are opting for greater legibility and designers are turning back to vintage type styles to give a sense of authenticity and craft. (I’m willing to admit the evidence might not back me up on this, however!)

Fun, swishy 1970s-inspired serifs like Benguiat Caslon revival Cabernet are back. People keep trying to make ITC Avant Garde — another iconic 1970s typeface — happen again too. I don’t think it works for the most part, but I can see why designers think it’s cool in a coked-up New York way. Warren Chappell’s earnest calligraphic sans serif Lydian, originally released in 1938, continued its unlikely rise as a go-to literary typeface. It even got an explainer at Vox.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019) 19)

Black and white portrait photography has been the staple of biographies and classics for years, so it was interesting to see closely cropped black and white photographs used on the covers of a couple of new literary novels this year. This isn’t entirely new obviously. Black and white photography has long been used to signify that something is “art” (as opposed to, say, “pornography”). But I think the latest iteration of trend was started by Cardon Webb‘s 2015 cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which used a black and white photograph by the late Peter Hujar.

Coincidentally the cover of the US edition of Garth Greenwell’s new novel Cleanness, publishing early 2020, was designed by Thomas Colligan and uses contemporary black and white photograph by Jack Davison. (The UK edition, designed by Ami Smithson fits this trend a little less neatly, but features black and white photograph by Mark McKnight)

Something that I didn’t anticipate was the use of contemporary landscape and figure painting on the covers of some the big literary releases of the year. Like black and white photography, it felt almost pre-digital — a grasp at traditional values of craft. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it is a rejection of post-modernism. But maybe it is? I don’t know. Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott; design by Laywan Kwan; art by Fahamu Pecou (Liveright / August 2019)
Inland by Téa Obrecht; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Tamara Ruiz (Random House / August 2019)

Thank you to all the designers and art directors who’ve been in touch and helped me identify covers for my posts. I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to your message. It’s been a year.

The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero; design Allison Saltzman; lettering Boyoun Kim (Ecco / April 2019)

Also designed by Allison Saltzman:

Come Closer and Listen by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)
Sontag by Benjamin Moser; design by Allison Saltzman; ; photograph by Richard Avedon (Ecco / September)
Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Christian Northeast (Ecco / October 2019)

All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth; design by Michael Morris (Crown / January 2019)

Aug 9 —  Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)
Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev; design by Na Kim (Simon & Schuster / February 2019)
High School by Tegan & Sara; design by Na Kim (MCD / September 2019)

Baron Wenkheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai ; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / September 2019)

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

Also designed by Kelly Blair:

Chances Are… by Richard Russo; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)
Fleushman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner; design by Kelly Blair (Random House / June 2019)

Big Bang by David Bowman; design by Jamie Keenan (Corsair / August 2019)

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James; design Helen Yentus; art by Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Riverhead / February 2019)

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant by Joel Golby; design by Linda Huang (Anchor / March 2019)

The cover of the UK edition, published by HarperCollins imprint Mudlark in February, was designed by Bill Bragg and is also very good:

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

Also designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson:

Swift by David Baker; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / April 2019)
Tamarisk Row by Gerald Murnane; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (And Other Stories / February 2019)

Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)

Also designed by Michel Vrana:

The Western Alienation Merit Badge by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)
Gorgeous War by Tim Blackmore; design Michel Vrana (Wilfred Laurier University Press / October 2019)

The Colonel’s Wife by Rosa Liksom; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / December 2019)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener’s Companion by Liberty Hyde Bailey; design by Kimberly Glyder (Cornell University Press / September 2019)
The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden; design by Kimberly Glyder (Thomas Nelson / July 2019)

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer; design Rodrigo Corral (MCD / December 2019)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

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

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

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead / August 2019)

Driving in Cars with Homeless Men by Kate Wisel; design Catherine Casalino (University of Pittsburgh Press / October 2019)

Also designed by Catherine Casalino:

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg; design by Catherine Casalino (Hougton Mifflin / October 2019)
Joy Enough by Sarah McColl; design by Catherine Casalino (Liveright / January 2019)

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

Also designed by Pablo Delcan:

The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)
Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

Even That Wildest Hope by Seyward Goodhand; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / September 2019)

Land and Forests by Andrew Forbes; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / May 2019)
The Truth About Facts by Bart Vautour; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / November 2019)

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen; photography by Arthur Woodcroft (New Directions / October 2019)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / July 2019)
Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky; design by Janet Hansen; ice rendered by Justin Metz (Knopf / July 2019)
Old Newgate Road by Keith Scribner; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / January 2019)

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold; design by Jo Thomson (Transworld / February 2019)

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

Follow This Thread by Henry Eliot; design by Elena Giavaldi (Three Rivers Press / March 2019) 

Holy Lands by Amanda Sthers; design by Tree Abraham (Bloomsbury / January 2019)

Also designed by Tree Abraham:

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)
From the Shadows by Juan José Millás; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / August 2019)
The Flip by Jeffery J. Kripal; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2019)

Humiliation by Paulina Flores; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

The Crying Book by Heather Christie; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)
Vincent and Alice and Alice by Shane Jones; design by Nicole Caputo (Tyrant / July 2019)

Indelible in the Hippocampus by Shelly Oria; design by Sunra Thompson (MacSweeney’s / September 2019)

Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)

Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / August 2019)

Tom Etherington is also the designer of Penguin magazine The Happy Reader:

Life Support by Julia Copus; design by Helen Crawford-White (Head of Zeus / April 2019)

A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson; design by Helen Crawford-White (Grove / March 2019)

The Light That Failed by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / October 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington; design by Matt Dorfman (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Mothers by Chris Power; design by Grace Han (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2019)

Also designed by Grace Han:

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2019)
Rutting Season by Mandeliene Smith; design by Grace Han (Scribner / February 2019)

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin; design by Stephen Brayda (Riverhead / January 2019)

Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)

Also designed by Gray318:

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019)
Grand Union by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / October 2019)
Salt On Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie; design by Gray318 (Canongate / January 2019)

Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher; design by Jonathan Bush (W. W. Norton / April 2019)

Not Working by Josh Cohen; design by Matthew Young (Granta / January 2019)

Also designed by Matthew Young:

What We Really Do All Day by Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan; design Matthew Young (Pelican / September 2019)
Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mithcell; design by Matthew Young (Pelican / October 2019)

One Day by Gene Weingarten; design by David Litman (Blue Rider / October 2019)

Also designed by David Litman:

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane; design by David Litman (Scribner / May 2019)
The Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz Smith; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / November 2019)

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

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / September 2019)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)
Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)

Safe Houses I Have Known by Steve Healey; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / September 2019)

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

The Hypothetical Man by Paul Maliszewski & Ryan Weil; design by Alban Fischer (Trnsfr Books / March 2019)
Space Struck by Paige Lewis; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / October 2019)

Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)

Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Open Letter Books / December 2019)

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)

Oliver Munday wrote about designing the cover for New Directions at Literary Hub earlier this year.

He also designed a lot my favourite covers this year…

Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / July 2019)
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cotton; design by Oliver Munday (The New Press / January 2019)
White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019)
Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / June 2019) 

Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Tyler Comrie; illustration Justin Metz (Knopf / June)

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)

Also designed by Rachel Willey:

The New Me by Halle Butler; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)
The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates; design Greg Mollica; art Calida Garcia Rawles (One World / September 2019)

The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)

A Year Without a Name by Cyrus Grace Dunham; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co. / October 2019)

Consent by Donna Freitas; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / August 2019)
Maggie Brown & Others by Peter Orner; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / July 2019)
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Published June 21, 2019

Book Covers of Note, June 2019

Apparently it is June already. I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible mistake. 

Here are your book covers of note.


Aug 9 —  Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)


Cogito by Victor Dixen; design by Jim Tierney (Collection R / May 2019)

This reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what. The best I could up with was Nicole Caputo‘s stripey op-art cover for Liveblog by Megan Boyle, but that’s not it at all… 


The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo; design by Julian Humphries (Fourth Estate / June 2019)


The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey; design by Will Staehle (Harper Voyager / June 2019)


Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)


The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr; design by Jared Oriel (W.W. Norton / June 2019)


Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)


Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)


November by Jorge Galán; design by Steve Leard (Little, Brown / June 2019)

I’m starting to detect a colour scheme at work here, Steve… ;-) 


On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)

Are we seeing a trend for close cropped photographs of… arms? (Don’t get me wrong, these are both beautiful photographs / covers.)

Also of note in a compare-and-contrast sort of way, the cover of the UK edition of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous published by Jonathan Cape was designed by Suzanne Dean:

 


Open Me by Lisa Locascio; design by Kelly Winton; collage by Katrien de Blauwer (Grove / June 2019)


Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn; design by Steve Attardo; handlettering by Sarahmay Wilkinson (Liveright / June 2019)


Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh; design by David Curtis (Tor / June 2019)


The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)


The Sun On My Head by Geovani Martins; design by Clare Skeats (Faber & Faber / June 2019)


The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri; design by Christopher Gale (Canongate / May 2019)


The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)

This reminds me (a little bit) of the Penguin English Library covers art directed by Coralie Bickford-Smith a few years ago:


William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Casey Rae; design by Matt Avery (University of Texas Press / June 2019)

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Published December 11, 2018

Book Covers of Note 2018

This has been an exhausting year for oh so, so many reasons, but book covers remained a bright spot for me in 2018. 

As always, my end-of-year list collects together the covers that I found interesting or noteworthy in some way or another in the past 12 months. It is organized alphabetically by title and grouped by designer (because that makes sense to me when I’m compiling the list). 

In terms of trends, there were a lot of hot orange book covers this year. Stark black, white and red covers were popular for non-fiction. Stars and stripes featured heavily too (I refuse to do a post about this!). Snakes seemed to be a thing!

Typographically, big white sans serifs are still a go-to. And hand-lettering and handwriting are still going strong. But retro typefaces, particularly big serifs with swishy swashes, are making a comeback. 

Thanks as always to everyone who has supported the blog this year, especially the folks who have taken the time to help with cover images and design credits. I’m sorry for the many, many the emails I have not replied to this year, and for all the covers, designers, and publishers I have overlooked. 


Aetherial Worlds by Tatyana Tolstaya; design by Stephanie Ross (Knopf / March 2018)

Stephanie Ross’s cover for Ruth Bader Ginsberg by Jane Sherron De Hart, published by Knopf in October, also caught my eye this year. 


Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore by Emma Southon; design by Mark Ecob (Unbound / August 2018)


America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo; design by Gray318 (Atlantic Books / May 2018)

Also designed by Gray318:

Something Great and Beautiful by Enrico Pellegrini; design by Gray318 (Other Press / September 2018)
Me Mum. Me Dad. Me. by Malcolm Duffy; design Gray318 (Head of Zeus / April 2018)
Feel Free by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / February 2018)

(I got to visit Jon in his studio this summer, which was nice.)


Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald; design David Pearson (Penguin / June 2018)

Also designed by David Pearson:

Staying Power by Peter Fryer; design by David Pearson; illustration by Adam Busby (Pluto Press / September 2018)
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know by Colm Tóibín; design David Pearson (Viking / October 2018)
England’s Discontents by Mike Wayne; design by David Pearson (Pluto Press / November 2018)


The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Rafi Romaya; illustration by Florian Schommer (Canongate / January 2018)


Born To Be Posthumous by Mark Dery; design by Jim Tierney; photograph by Richard Corman (Little Brown & Co. / November 2018)

Congratulations to Jim and Sara on the birth of their baby last month! 


Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / May 2018)


Cherry by Nico Walker; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / August 2018)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar; design Janet Hansen (Knopf / July 2018)
Provocations by Camille Paglia; design Janet Hansen (Pantheon / October 2018)


Circe by Madeline Miller; design by Will Staehle (Little Brown & Co / April 2018)

Also designed by Will Staehle:

The Outsider by Stephen King; design by Will Staehle (Scribner / May 2018)
The Infinite Future by Tim Wirkus; design by Will Staehle (Prentice Hall / January 2018)


Codex 1962 by Sjón; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / September 2018)

The cover of the UK edition of Codex 1962 published by Sceptre, which features art by Owen Gent, is also beautiful.

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral Studio: 

Severance by Ling Ma; design Rodrigo Corral (FSG / August 2018)
The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen; design by Rodrigo Corral; photo by Jeroen Mantel (FSG / November 2018)
The Linden Tree by Cesar Aira; design by Rodrigo Corral (New Directions / May 2018)


The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin; design by Rachel Willey (Henry Holt / April 2018)

Also designed by Rachel Willey:

Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey; design by Rachel Willey (Random House / August 2018)
The Pisces by Melissa Broder; design by Rachel Willey (Bloomsbury / May 2018)


The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams; design by Joan Wong (New Directions / September 2018)


Educated by Tara Westover; illustration by Patrik Svensson (Random House / March 2018)

Probably the most ubiquitous nonfiction book of the year (if not, in the end, the bestselling). Canada and the UK went with photographic covers. This was more memorable I thought. 


Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2018)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2018)
Heavy by Kiese Laymon; design by Na Kim (Scribner / October 2018)
Certain American States by Catherine Lacey; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2018)


he Fed and Lehman Brothers by Laurence M. Ball; design by Catherine Casalino (University of Cambridge Press / June 2018)

Also designed by Catherine Casalino:

The Age of Caesar by Plutarch; translation by Pamela Mensch; design by Catherine Casalino (W.W. Norton / January 2018)
Here Kitty Kitty by Jardine Libaire; design Catherine Casalino (Hogarth / June 2018)


The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead Books / April 2018)

I also really liked Ben Denzer’s typographic cover for A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson (Penguin Press / August 2018).


Feminasty by Erin Gibson; design by Anne Twomey; photograph by Ricky Middlesworth (Grand Central / September 2018)


The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem; design Allison Saltzman; photograph Kate Bellm (Ecco Press / November 2018)


Fox 8 by George Saunders; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / November 2018)


Gin: Distilled by Gin Foundry; design by James Paul Jones (Ebury Press / October 2018)


Gun Love by Jennifer Clement; design by Michael Morris (Hogarth / March 2018)

Also designed by Michael Morris:

My German Brother by Chico Buarque; design by Michael Morris (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2018)
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki; design by Michael Morris; illustration by Oliver Wilson (Crown / February 2018)


Hippie by Paulo Coelho; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / September 2018)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

Ponti by Sharlene Teo; design by Tyler Comrie (Simon & Schuster / September 2018)
Bitwise: A Life in Code by David Auerbach; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2018)
There There by Tommy Orange; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / June 2018)


The Hole by José Revueltas; design by John Gall (New Directions / November 2018)

Also designed by John Gall:

The Frolic of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima; design John Gall (Vintage / November 2018)
Emissary by Yuko Tawada; design by John Gall (New Directions / April 2018)

(Don’t forget about the new book collecting 10 years of John Gall’s collages!)


The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara; design by Sara Wood (Ecco / February 2018)

You can read about the design of this cover on Literary Hub. 


The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran; design by Alex Merto (Atria Books / September 2018)

Also designed by Alex Merto:

Pretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin; design by Alex Merto (Scribner / May 2018)
Let It Bang by RJ Young; design by Alex Merto (HMH / November 2018)
Awayland by Ramona Ausubel; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead / March 2018)


In the Distance by Hernan Diaz; design by Luke Bird (Daunt Books / June 2018)

I read the US edition of In the Distance (Coffee House Press / 2017) earlier this year. It is quite extraordinary and not what I expected — a western, but not really. I was really pleased that Daunt decided to publish it in the UK. 

Also designed by Luke Bird:

Patient X by David Peace; design by Luke Bird (Faber & Faber / April 2018)
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata; design by Luke Bird (Portobello Books / July 2018)


The Island That Disappeared by Tom Feiling; design by Marina Drukman (Melville House / March 2018)


The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman; design by Jaya Miceli (Viking / March 2018)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / February 2018)
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon; design Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / July 2018)
Wasteland by W. Scott Poole; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / November 2018)


A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne; design by Jo Thomson (Doubleday / August 2018)


Liveblog by Megan Boyle; design by Nicole Caputo (Tyrant Books / September 2018)

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

It Needs To Look Like We Tried by Todd Robert Petersen; design by Nicole Caputo (Counterpoint / May 2019)
Tomb of the Unknown Racist by Blanche McCrary Boyd; design by Nicole Caputo (Counterpoint / May 2019)
The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman; design by Nicole Caputo (Counterpoint / March 2018)

The Gunners — a novel about a group of misfit friends reuniting at a funeral — was a favourite in my office this year. 


The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner; design by Peter Mendelsund; photograph by Nan Goldin (Scribner / May 2018)

Also designed by Peter Mendelsund:

Notes from the Fog by Ben Marcus; design Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / August 2018)
Calypso by David Sedaris; design by Peter Mendelsund (Little, Brown & Co. / May 2018)
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / November 2018)


My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci; design by Anna Morrison (Pushkin Press / April 2018)

I thought this was a nice contrast to the cover of the US edition designed by Oliver Munday (Pantheon / April 2017). It’s interesting that only the cat’s ear makes an appearance, and the snake (a boa constrictor in the story I think?) is more prominent.  

Also designed by Anna Morrison:

Odessa Stories by Isaac Babel; design by Anna Morrison (Puhskin Press / November 2018)
All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church, designed by Anna Morrison (Fourth Estate / March 2018)
Women by Chloe Caldwell; design by Anna Morrison (Fourth Estate / March 2018)


No Country Woman by Zoya Patel; design by Astred Hicks (Hachette Australia / August 2018)


Notes from the Fog by Ben Marcus; design by Jamie Keenan (Granta / September 2018)

Also designed by Jamie Keenan:

Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers; design Jamie Keenan; art by Emily Allchurch (Faber & Faber / August 2018)
Rock and Roll is Life by D.J. Taylor; design by Jamie Keenan (Constable / May 2018)
Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips; design Jamie Keenan (FSG / October 2018)


On Gravity by A. Zee; design by Jason Alejandro (Princeton University Press / May 2018)


Packing My Library by Alberto Manguel; design by Tom Starr (Yale University Press / March 2018)


The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani; design by Julianna Lee (Penguin / January 2018)


The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor; design by Strick&Williams (Catapult / August 2018)


She Wants It by Jill Soloway; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / October 2018)


The Son of Black Thursday by Alejandro Jodorowsky; design by Richard Ljoenes (Restless Books / November 2018)

Richard Ljoenes recently talked about designing covers for Alejandro Jodorowsky — the cover of Where the Bird Sings Best was on my 2016 notable list — with Spine Magazine. 


The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams; design by Jack Smyth (Simon & Schuster / August 2018)

Also designed by Jack Smyth:

The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah; design by Jack Smyth (Simon & Schuster / May 2018) 
Yeti by Graham Hoyland; design by Jack Smyth (William Collins / May 2018)
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better by Benjamin Wood; design by Jack Smyth (Scribner UK / June 2018)


A Superior Spectre by Angela Meyer; design by Design by Committee (Ventura / August 2018)


Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / June 2018)


Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering; design Donna Cheng (Simon & Schuster / July 2018)

Crossing out is a thing.


Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier; design Dan Mogford (The Bodley Head / June 2018)

Also designed by Dan Mogford:

Homeland by Walter Kempowski; design by Dan Mogford (Granta / November 2018)
A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin; design by Dan Mogford (Serpent’s Tail / 2018)
Portraits Without Frames by Lev Ozerov; design by Dan Mogford (Granta / November 2018)


There There by Tommy Orange; design by Suzanne Dean; art by Bryn Perrott (Harvill Secker / July 2018)

You can read about the design of this cover at Spine Magazine.

Also designed by Suzanne Dean:

The Largess of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / February 2018)
Nervous States by William Davies; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / September 2018)
The Only Story by Julian Barnes; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / February 2018)


This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga; design Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / August 2018)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

The Last of the Stanfields by Marc Levy; design by Kimberly Glyder (AmazonCrossing / December 2018)
Waiting for Tomorrow by Nathacha Appanah; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / April 2018)
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce; design by Kimberly Glyder (Random House / January 2018)

Tin Man by Sarah Winman; design by Grace Han ( G.P. Putnam’s Sons / May 2018)

Everyone should read Tin Man btw. It is sad and lovely.

Also designed by Grace Han:

The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2018)
There Will Be No Miracles Here by Casey Gerald; design by Grace Han (Riverhead Books / October 2018)
Florida by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / June 2018)


Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver; design by Ami Smithson (Faber & Faber / October 2018)

This has rather fancy edges (and endpapers I believe):


The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn; design by Elsie Lyons (William Morrow / January 2018)

I also really liked Elisie Lyons’ glamorously noir cover for Sunburn by Laura Lippman (William Morrow / February 2018).

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