OK, this is super-late even by my standards of lateness, so let’s just get on with it because we’ve all got stuff to do…
Arctic Smoke by Randy Nikkel Schroeder; design by Michel Vrana (NeWest Press / September 2019)
Aeneis by Vergilius; design by Gray318 (Jaguar / 2019)
Jon will surely not thank me for mentioning this, but the Aeneid cover reminds me of the brilliant 2007 Penguin Modern Classics editions of Kafka designed by Mother and Jim Stoddart (featuring photographs by Gary Card and Jacob Sutton), and I can’t pass up the opportunity to post them here. They still look extraordinary…
(And in the process of looking for images, I cam across a nice essay from a couple of years ago by designer Clare Skeats discussing the Kafka covers at Grafik)
The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)
The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden; design by Kimberly Glyder (Thomas Nelson / July 2019)
Frankly in Love by David Yoon; design by Owen Gildersleeve (G. P. Putnam / September 2019)
From the Shadows by Juan José Millás; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / August 2019)
In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / July 2019)
High School by Tegan & Sara; design by Na Kim (MCD / September 2019)
The cover of the Canadian edition published by Simon & Schuster Canada (left) was designed by Emy Storey. The cover of the UK edition published by Virago (right) was adapted from the Canadian design by Nico Taylor.
Inland by Téa Obrecht; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Tamara Ruiz (Random House / August 2019)
The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)
Listening to the Wind by Tim Robinson; design by Mary Austin Speaker (Milkweed / September 2019)
De New York Trilogie by Paul Auster; design by Moker Ontwerp (De Bezige Bij / August 2019)
This reminded me of Evan Gaffney‘s 2012 ‘film noir’ covers for the Vintage paperbacks of James M. Cain.
Permanent Record by Mary H. K. Choi; design by Lizzy Bromley; illustration by gg (Simon & Schuster / September 2019)
This reminded me of the panels of Tony Abruzzo romance comics that Roy Lichtenstein liked to lift from.
gg also illustrated the cover of Mary H. K. Choi’s previous novel Emergency Contact.
Oh and Koyama Press is publishing a new book by gg called Constantly in January 2020. It looks beautiful.
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019)
Rail by Miranda Pearson; design David Drummond (McGill-Queen’s University Press / September 2019)
Safe Houses I Have Known by Steve Healey; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / September 2019)
One to add to the redacted covers list.
Shame On Me by Tessa McWatt; design by Allison Colpoys (Scribe / August 2019)
This has some nice Alvin Lustig / New Directions vibes.
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Tyler Comrie; illustration Justin Metz (Knopf / June)
For some reason this made me think of the 2015 cover for I Am Sorry to Think I Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell designed by Peter Mendelsund (with hand lettering by Janet Hansen and photography by George Baier IV)
Sontag by Benjamin Moser; design by Tom Etherington; photograph by Richard Avedon (Allen Lane / September)
The cover of the US edition published by Ecco was designed by Allison Saltzman. Title only appears on the spine (which, if my social media is anything to go by, gets big high fives from book designers everywhere).
To The Island of Tides by Alistair Moffat; Art by Andy Lovell; art direction Gill Heeley (Canongate / August 2019)
It’s lovely to see contemporary landscape art featuring prominently on book covers of late…
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates; design Greg Mollica; art Calida Garcia Rawles (One World / September 2019)
The New York Times ran a short article about the genesis of this cover earlier this year.
For the font-curious, the typeface is Alias Harbour according to the folks at Fonts In Use. Another calligraphic type alternative to the ubiquitous Lydian perhaps?
We Are the Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar; design Nicole Hower; illustration by Adams Carvalho (Sourcebooks / September 2019)
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott; design by Laywan Kwan; art by Fahamu Pecou (Liveright / August 2019)
And I am definitely here for the contemporary figure painting on book covers trend…
