The 11 Best Book Covers of January

Another month of books, another month of book covers. The first crop of designs of 2023 is fresh, cheeky, and mushroom-forward, which can only portend good things (please let it portend good things). Here are my favorites of the month, and as always, feel free to drop your own below.

Tom Crewe, The New Life; cover design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner, January 3)

The vibrant yellow, all-caps text treatment against this intriguing black and white photograph would have been appealing even without the inset—but of course it’s the inset that makes it sing. (It also reminds me a bit of Na Kim’s cover for Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy, though Miceli’s take is subtler.)

Jáchym Topol, tr. Alex Zucker A Sensitive Person; cover design by Jenny Volvovski (Yale University Press, January 3)

I love an esoteric book cover with a little bit of humor.

An Yu, Ghost Music; cover design by Suzanne Dean (Grove Press, January 10)

The first of two luscious mushroom covers this month—I love the texture here, the vintage quality of the mushrooms, and most of all, the elegant use of the staff, which I can’t ever recall seeing on a book cover before.

Stephen Markley, The Deluge; cover design by Matt Dorfman (Simon & Schuster, January 10)

So simple but so terrifying (and so brilliant).

Matthew Salesses, The Sense of Wonder; cover design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown, January 17)

The blurb on Salesses’ novel calls it “blistering, confident, full of swagger and heart” and the same could be said for this cover—it looks, besides all that, like Kulick had actual fun making it.

John Hendrickson, Life on Delay; cover design by Oliver Munday (Knopf, January 17)

Another so-simple-and-yet-so-smart cover for this list, from the great Oliver Munday.

Iliana Regan, Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir; cover design by Morgan Krehbiel (Agate, January 24)

The visual equivalent of ASMR.

Kathryn Ma, The Chinese Groove; cover design by Na Kim (Counterpoint, January 24)

I’m getting Saul Bass’s Vertigo vibes, updated with a sense of humor. I love how much space the deceptively simple elements take up.

Martin Riker, The Guest Lecture; cover design by Kelly Winton (Black Cat, January 24)

The impossible geometries here—and the way the text is tucked in among them—make me want to keep looking.

Sheila Liming, Hanging Out; cover design by Beste Miray (Melville House, January 24)

I don’t even really know what’s going on here, but I want to find out.

Gabrielle Bates, Judas Goat; cover design by Beth Steidle (Tin House, January 24)

Which do you see first, the goat or the girl?