Another month of books, another month of book covers. July brings us a fresh summer basket of juicy, saturated colors, clever concepts, and weird peek-a-boos. Here are some of my favorites from the month that was:

Love the font, love the frame, but what I find most pleasing is that an illustrated cover can look so matte and so juicy at the same time. (Contreras also illustrated the cover of Reyes’ There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven which pulls off a similar effect.)

I have seen many many many mouths on book covers (people like mouths, I wonder why?), but never quite like this—I love both the concept and the restraint. I also appreciate that Hansen carried over the font for the supplementary text from her design for Schulman’s Lucky Dogs.

I can go either way on faux-distressing these days, but the colors and balance are really doing it for me here.

This art might have made for a thousand good covers, but the title placement, on its little faux-sticker, makes it great.

Holy saturation, Batman. I love the intensity of the colors, the takeover pattern, the text treatment on the edges (with, for contrast, its subtle gradation).

Just perfectly what it needs to be. Love the font.

The paper tear/tear with the title in it! The face just barely visible! Brilliant.

As Dan at Casual Optimist pointed out, peephole eyes are weirdly prevalent this month. But I particularly appreciate this one for how unabashedly creepy it is.

What can I say, I love a drip.

Another great frame, another great color story, another great piece of art.

And one with no color or art at all, that manages to be just as impactful, in its own way.