The 13 Best Book Covers of August

Well, it’s the final month of a long, strange, terrifying summer. I don’t have anything good to say about it here, except that (as you may have surmised) it has been populated by quite a few excellent book covers—some of them as strange as These Times, but most of them better. In case you’ve resorted to wallpapering your rooms with the stripped jackets of new books (what, who knows what you’re up to in that apartment), or if you just want to bask in the beauty, here are a few of my favorites of the month.

Peter Cameron, What Happens at Night; cover design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult, August 4)

I haven’t been this in love with a book cover in a long time. It’s so weird, so moody, so beautiful, and so perfect for this icy, mysterious novel. It feels almost like a forgotten, damaged photograph, something you’d find in a trunk in the attic and wonder about. And the pop of blue in the title? Extraordinary.

Shane McCrae, Sometimes I Never Suffered; cover design by Crisis, cover art by Toyin Ojih Odutola (FSG, August 4)

This cover is all about the astoundingly beautiful artwork by Toyin Ojih Odutola, framed perfectly and simply by a white jacket and elegant typography. I want to hang it on the wall.

Yun Ko-Eun, tr. Lizzie Buehler, The Disaster Tourist (Counterpoint, August 4)

This cover is a whole mood: the slightly off primary colors, the prone woman (is she sleeping?), the tilted text, and the polka dots on the umbrella, which lend it all a sense of insanity. It’s just the kind of cover that would make me want to read this book, even if I hadn’t heard anything about it.

Eduardo C. Corral, Guillotine; cover design by Carlos Esparza, cover art by Felipe Baeza (Graywolf, August 4)

Here’s another one that’s all about the art, and whose designer managed to augment a beautiful image perfectly with the text treatment. But what art!

Nate Marshall, Finna; cover art by Carlton Murrell (One World, August 11)

Where to start? I love the playing cards (all spades), the portrait, the edge of definition on the Jack, the type treatment (I’m always a sucker for a bleeding edge), the bold colorway, the distressing. It looks like an object you’d want to keep forever.

Elisa Gabbert, The Unreality of Memory; cover design by Thomas Colligan, cover photograph by Yuko Yamada (FSG Originals, August 11)

Anything that evokes both Magritte and an endless maw of empty space is going to become an instant favorite in my book.

Daniel Galera, tr. Julia Sanches, Twenty After Midnight; cover design by Rothfos und Gabler, cover art by  Chaika Iryna (Penguin Books, August 11)

I don’t have any idea what’s going on here; if the previous cover made me think of Magritte, this one makes me think of Dalí—a digital Dalí. But I want to keep looking at it, trying to figure it out, and that’s half the battle, isn’t it?

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste; cover design by Greg Mollica, cover photo by Bruce Davidson (Random House, August 4)

I love the way the faces in the photograph almost dissolve into an abstract pattern, an effect enhanced by the slightly translucent quality of the subtitle and supplementary text. But then you look closer, and the image is not abstract at all, but rather perfectly chosen.

Stanley Plumly, Middle Distance; cover design by Jared Oriel, art direction by Ingsu Liu (Norton, August 18)

This is certain a category of book cover, and it’s one of my favorites: a blank field populated by one odd object, probably at some bizarre scale, plus minimalist text treatment. Think Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, or Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, which was one of last month’s favorites. The success always depends on the choice of object, and this horse figurine is a success in my book.

Jessica Gross, Hysteria; cover art by Xiao Wang, cover design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press, August 18)

It’s very cool and sort of upsetting and absolutely unexpected, much like the book it covers.

Daisy Johnson, Sisters; cover design by Jaya Miceli, cover art by Jeremy Olson (Riverhead, August 25)

Clearly this cover has some kinship with the previous one (and both designed by Jayas!), but with a different angle—several in fact. It’s disturbing in the most compelling way.

Héctor Tobar, The Last Great Road Bum; cover design by TK TK (MCD, August 25)

I love the hand lettering (and doodles!) here, and the sense that the entire cover is an annotation of one jazzed-up passport photo.

Vanessa Veselka, The Great Offshore Grounds; cover design by Kelly Blair, cover image based on A Breaking Wave by David James (Knopf, August 25)

It’s designed to be hypnotic, and it is.