The 10 Best Book Covers of July

Another month of books, another month of book covers. It’s the dead of summer, but this month’s selections have energy. They might even be, as the kids say, a vibe?

Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; cover design by John Gall (Knopf, July 5)

Usually I don’t love covers that make use of famous artworks—because, you know, we’ve seen it—but here, with the punched-up colors and extravagant 90s font, it really works.

Elisa Albert, Human Blues; cover design and illustration by Lia Kantrowitz, art direction by Alison Forner (Avid Reader Press, July 5)

This is the perfect level of chaos for a book cover—funny and sexy and weird and sad, while also kind of giving me old-school Sunday comic strip vibes. Most importantly, it doesn’t look like anything else out there.

Katie Kafner, The Boys; cover design by Strick&Williams (Spiegel & Grau, July 12)

This cover strikes the perfect semi-surrealist note for the book at hand, whose central conceit I will not give away here. And like the last cover, it stands out from the pack for sheer originality!

Lina Wolff, tr. Frank Perry, Carnality (Other Press, July 12)

So perfect, so restrained, so intriguing, so irreverent. I love everything about it.

K-Ming Chang, Gods of Want (One World, July 12)

Another gorgeous (but totally different) use of an existing artwork—in this case, an illustration of the nine-headed bird of Chinese mythology—paired with a custom text treatment.

Elvia Wilk, Death By Landscape (Soft Skull, July 19)

There’s something very unsettling about this cover—the dead tree defying our expectations by breaking the bounds of its frame, not to mention the blood red back there—that makes it particularly memorable.

Jamil Jan Kochai, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories; cover design by Zak Tebbal (Viking, July 19)

If you read this column with any regularity, you know I love object covers, but this time it’s the (Rorschach) stain for me!

Felicia Berliner, Shmutz; cover design by Laywan Kwan (Atria, July 19)

I mean, you gotta love it.

Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living; cover design by David Litman (Viking, July 26)

This cover gives major Saul Bass movie poster vibes, which makes it pretty perfect for the novel at hand, a moody, charming, irreverent noir about old books and New York City. (Can’t wait for the adaptation.)

Jon Raymond, Denial (Simon & Schuster, July 26)

Another cover that takes something from movie posters—I get a whiff of Jaws here—but whose power comes from scale and simplicity.