The 13 Best Book Covers of July

Another month of books, another month of book covers. In July, things were obscured. Things were omitted. Things blurred, stretched, melted, smoked. Well, it’s midsummer, after all. I hope you’re getting a little rain where you are. Here are some of my favorite book covers of the month; let me know yours in the comments below.

Jacqueline Harpman, tr. Ros Schwartz, We Were Forbidden; cover design by Jared Bartman (Transit Books, July 7)

Gorgeous use of a film filter—is that a figure or a blot? Either way, I love it (especially the horizontal line).

David Thomson, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies; cover design by Tom Etherington (Simon and Schuster, July 7)

Enticing, creative treatment for a nonfiction book.

Emeline Atwood, A Real Animal; cover design by Patrick Sullivan (Catapult, July 7)

Quite daring, in its way.

Sigrid Nunez, It Will Come Back to You: The Collected Stories; cover design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead, July 14)

The perfect sort of mixed media—the “collected stories” in the style of the sketch artist’s signature is particularly working for me here.

Hélène Bessette, tr. Kate Briggs, Twenty Minutes of Silence; cover design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions, July 14)

Subtle and delicious. I love the fade.

Oana Aristide, Astronaut!; cover design by Utku Lomlu (W. W. Norton, July 14)

Unsubtle and delicious!

Keith Ridgway, Dooneen; cover design by O.O.P.S. (New Directions, July 21)

A cover that dares you to ask: which way is truly up?

Chloe Lauter, The Flayed Man; cover design by Victoria Maxfield (Soft Skull, July 21)

A chilling version of the fragment trope.

Kohei Saito, tr. Brian Bergstrom, Capital from Zero; cover design by Ben Denzer (Astra House, July 21)

I love the way the book becomes a colorblock here.

Emilee Hackney, All That’s Unseen; cover design by Elisha Zepeda (Penguin Press, July 28)

Genius layering.

Valeria Luiselli, Beginning Middle End; cover design by Kelly Blair (Knopf, July 28)

The simple elegance of the type treatment is doing quite a lot.

Marta Pérez-Carbonell, tr. Rosalind Harvey, I Made You Up Inside My Head; cover design by Grace Han (Riverhead, July 28)

Those negative clouds!

César Aira, tr. Chris Andrews, Five; cover design by Erik Carter (New Directions, July 28)

Sometimes bold is best.