The 12 Best Book Covers of March
Textures, Miniatures, and Unsettled Animals
Another month of books, another month of book covers. This month, the weather began to allow for outdoor displays of jackets—both light and literary. My March favorites included dreamy paintings, unsettled animals, otherworldly miniatures, and more than one unsettled animal. (Not pictured: the lion and the lamb.)
Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, translated by Ann Goldstein, cover design by Andrea Ucini (Europa, March 15)
I find this cover equal parts whimsical and creepy, and I can’t look away from it. Would it also work as the cover of a horror novel about a pseudonymous writer trapped inside her own story? Yes! Honestly, the possibilities are endless (just like those of a blank page)!
Melissa Febos, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, cover design and illustration by Nicole Caputo (Catapult, March 15)
I love the nod to Matisse, the joyful colors, and the subtle wrapping of the body and the text. A perfect marriage of words and illustration.
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, The Sex Lives of African Women, cover design by Chelsea Hunter (Astra House, March 1)
This cover both elevates and transforms the ubiquitous blob trend. It’s cool and colorful and it makes me long for outdoor drinks with friends.
Kathryn Davis, Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir, cover design by Jeenee Lee, art by Anne Davis (Graywolf Press, March 1)
There’s both a deliberateness and an insouciance at work here that I love. The memoir itself is a high-wire act between the comic and tragic, and the doublings of the cover sets the stage perfectly.
Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19 (Riverhead, March 1)
The texture of this one is so appealing that it’s difficult to restrain myself from touching my laptop screen.
Allegra Hyde, Eleutheria, cover design by Maddie Partner (Vintage, March 8)
I would like to live in this book cover—who can I speak to about that?
Yevgenia Belorusets, Lucky Breaks, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky, cover design by Matt Dorfman (New Directions, March 1)
Beloruset’s collection revolves around the lives of Ukrainian women amid the Russo-Ukrainian war, and this cover suggests to me the idea of life amid an ongoing conflict—chaos and confusion and darkness, but beauty too, as there always must be.
Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation, cover design by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland (Penguin Press, March 22)
I never could resist a miniature, but throw in an element of hallucinatory anti-gravity and a possible parallel universe portal? Sold in the room.
Candice Wuehle, Monarch, cover design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull, March 29)
I’m obsessed with this sinister Barbie, but you really must check out the gif version to get the full effect of the trapped-in-code static.
John Elizabeth Stintzi, My Volcano, cover design by John Elizabeth Stintzi (Two Dollar Radio, March 22)
The vibes have shifted again. This bird is now the vibes.
Pankaj Mishra, Run and Hide, cover design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 1)
The layering effect of this suggests both nostalgia and escape. I love how elegantly the feeling of motion is captured here.
Silke Ulstein, Reptile Memoirs, translated by Alison McCullough, cover design and collage by Michel Vrana by (Grove Press, March 15)
Sexy and a little sinister, like a noir fairy tale.
