The 10 Best Book Covers of August
A Slippery Month
Another month of books, another month of book covers. In August it was all about the text treatments for me, which ranged from spooky to irreverent to just plain clever. Here are my favorites from the month:
Lena Valencia, Mystery Lights; cover design by Beth Steidle (Tin House, August 6)
Weird and witchy with a text treatment to match.
Ellen Ruppell Shell, Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels; cover design by Eli Mock, art by Jason Holley (Abrams, August 6)
It gets better the more you think about it.
Nathan Newman, How to Leave the House; cover design by Colin Webber (Viking, August 13)
Irreverent and fun!
Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite; cover design by Dan Jackson (Pantheon, August 13)
Usually I can take or leave this window-pane technique, but here, especially combined with the text (the overlap!) and hyper-saturation, it’s really working for me.
Anna Marie Tendler, Men Have Called Her Crazy; cover design by Alexa Sparacio (Simon & Schuster, August 13)
Another cover ruled by the text—that unusual left justification, the almost-70s paperback font, the little A and extended R. Add this image (does the sham match the wallpaper?) and it’s a whole vibe.
Yoko Ogawa, tr. Stephen Snyder, Mina’s Matchbox; cover design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon, August 13)
The effect is like a stamp on a brown paper bag—very satisfying.
Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky; cover design by Linda Huang (Knopf, August 20)
Very lovely gold and fade, with undeniable big book energy, and again I love the choices made with the title here—the spacing makes it.
Danez Smith, Bluff; cover design by by Mary Austin Speaker, art by Devan Shimoyama (Graywolf, August 20)
Extremely cool art.
David Sumpter, Four Ways of Thinking: A Journey Into Human Complexity (Flatiron, August 27)
Simple elements made extravagant. The UK cover is also very good, in a totally different way.
Olive Editions (series); cover designs by Milan Bozic (Harper Perennial, August 27)
Bonus: Bozic’s designs for Harper Perennial’s latest crop of Olive Editions are as scary as their source material. (The text making a crucifix for The Exorcist might be my favorite, but also I can’t look at that cover for very long…)
