Covetable covers

Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s covetable cover is ‘The Silent Companions’ by Laura Purcell, a hauntingly Gothic story that will stay with you for days after you read it. It is said to have been inspired by the works of Susan Hill. I devoured this book when I first got my hands on it, atmospheric and menacing, it is one of the best ghost stories I have read in years and has become one of my favourite books, I would read it again and again. It’s hard to explain the plot of this book without giving away spoilers but it masterfully weaves a story that entices and enthralls with a haunted house, an asylum, a crumbling majestic estate, paintings who’s eyes follow menacingly, and a vulnerable main character who must make sense of her new life whilst questioning her own sanity as events unravel around her.

The cover itself is gorgeous and has an extremely clever design. The key hole has been cut out of the cover and the painting behind is in the book peeking out at you. It gives the reader an unsettling feeling of being stalked and watched in a sinister manner. There are many motifs on the cover which also echo important items, themes and events in the book, all done in a Victorian Gothic style which evokes the time period in which the story is set. The two seemingly innocent and child-like silhouettes at the bottom hinting at the menacing wooden painted figures featured in the story. The stag’s head and fountain also echoing the setting of a grand estate. There are so many ‘Easter Eggs’ in this cover it is almost impossible to explain what they represent without spoiling the story and this is definitely one I would recommend to everyone. However, I entreat everyone to keep the cover design in mind as they are reading this book. Seemingly innocuous cover items will eventually hold an unsettling meaning as you reach them throughout the book. Excuse me for a second there seems to be a strange scraping noise behind me….

“You could not explain fear; you could only feel it, roaring through the silence and striking your heart still.”

The Silent Companions – Laura Purcell

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s covetable cover is ‘The Fox and the Star’ by Coralie Bickford-Smith who is the award-winning Art Director of the Penguin Hard Back Classics. This short tale artfully encompasses its themes of friendship, adventure, loss and hope in a heart-warming way both adults and children can access and enjoy.

The illustrations themselves were said to have been inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and the art of William Blake and this can be seen throughout the book. On the cover the fox can be seen looking up towards a night sky littered with tiny stars but one bigger than most in the top right corner. The winding blackberry thorns seems reminiscent of a fairy tale but equally reflects its natural setting. The book itself is a cloth-bound, rich night-sky blue with embossed silver design. It feels like a book that could be handed down through generations and it is beautiful.

‘Star would light the way for fox as he foraged for beetles and went wild in the tangled thorns.’

The Fox and the Star – Coralie Bickford-Smith

Purchase the book here if you would like to own it yourself.

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s covetable cover is ‘A Black Fox Running’ by Brian Carter. Originally published in the 1980’s this book has had a cover re-design for a more modern audience and what a beautiful cover it is. The book is perfect for lover’s of ‘Tarka the Otter’ and ‘Watership Down’. Sadly most of the time these are seen as children’s books, but for those of us who have read them, we know they shouldn’t be. They deal with the darker side of nature, animal-life and interactions with humans, with sometimes tragic and shocking scenes. In reality nature is brutal and unforgiving and these stories are a more realistic reflection of the trials of animals. This is also true of ‘A Black Fox Running’; with a dark-furred fox, Wulfgur, as its main character, pursued by a cruel, alcoholic, war-scarred trapper, the story is dark and delivers hope, love, grief and revenge in equal measure, as we follow the fox over the course of a year. It is beautifully written and descriptive creating a deep connection to nature and, Dartmoor, its setting.

The front cover has a fairytale-like motif of the black fox in motion surrounded by golden trees. This emotes the black fox running through an enveloping forest at night, lit by the light of the moon, as shown by his silhouette against the white circle in the middle of the cover. The white circular moon and tree branches which reach around it, draw the eye to the center of the cover to the title, while also adding to the sense of motion. It is almost as if the fox is running within a wheel and the branches are reeling past at speed. Within the story the main character, Wulfgar, although escaping the relentless pursuit of the hunt is now himself being pursued, so the cover reflects the never-ending run for survival that all animals, including Wulfgar, must go through. Unlike a Watership Down Cover, which often lulls reader’s into thinking it’s a cutesy story about bunnies because they are usually plastered on the cover in bright colours, this does not try to deceive the reader. The story is reasonably dark therefore the cover colour, black, reflects not only the fox’s fur, but the tone of the book as well.

“To live is to run. Always running-away from death, into death. Perhaps Man kills us to kill a memory. We are ghosts of Man the animal and he can’t live with the knowledge.”

A Black Fox Running – Brian Carter

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

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Purchase the book here if you would like to own it yourself.

Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s Covetable Cover is Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

A more utilitarian look than I prefer but still a clever design. The book itself is a series of short stories described as ‘thoughtful science fiction’ which explore philosophical questions, much like fictional thought experiments. The award-winning movie, Arrival, was actually based on one of his previous short stories.

This book uses words rather than pictures as the tools to describe the book to the reader. It’s strong bold font on the first ‘Exhalation’ then it’s slow fading of the consequent words almost makes the book feel as if it is breathing, quickly at first and then slowing as we go down the page. There is a suggestion of a strong beginning and then a fading of something over time, which Chiang actually touches upon in one of the short stories contained within this book.

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I’m glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.” 

― Ted Chiang, Exhalation: Stories

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

Purchase the book here if you would like to own it yourself.

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s Covetable Cover is a well-known classic that many of us have either read at school or have checked off our ‘100 books to read before you die’ lists. I’m not going to tell you what it is straight away, have a look at the symbolic items that are emphasized on the cover and try to work out which book this is….

Got it yet?

This book is extremely well known and many people have read it and are familiar with the symbolic items that are shown here. You’ll notice that the designer did not put the title on the front of the book because the visual description should immediately identify the book to the reader.

This is ‘Lord of The Flies’ by William Golding, a Folio Edition.

The book centers on a group of English School boys who are marooned on a desert island following a plane crash. What starts out as an exciting adventure with no adults, slowly begins to descend into power struggles, savagery and ultimately violence. If you have ever hesitated to read this book, then hesitate no more. It is a little bit of everything, horror, a coming-of age story, an allegory on the human condition. It is a novel about the “The end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart…” 

― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

On the cover we can see what looks to be a young boy turned towards us. Though he is obscured we can see his outline, his hair is a mess and he seems to have broken his glasses. This is one of the, some would say tragic main characters, ‘Piggy’. To the new reader, it raises questions, why are his glasses broken? Why do we only see him in shadow? Why is he surrounded by red? To the returning reader each of these questions has an answer. The glasses are a main symbol in the story which initiates the power struggle and the moment they are broken initiates the descent of the boys into savagery. The fact that Piggy is not seen in detail represents the fact that he is seen as a nuisance by the other boys and that their descent into savagery has made the boys unrecognisable. The red surrounding the figure can simply represent the sunset on the island but also represents the violence and death that is a consequence of their abandoning of their societal rules.

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.” 

― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Another simple and effective cover for a story that is so well-known it needs no words.

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s Covetable Cover is ‘A Darker Shade of Magic’ by V.E. Schwab. The book is the first in a trilogy with an interesting take on the effect of magic on alternate universes and the magic-users who traverse them. The cover uses visual description to hint at the character travelling between worlds in the story. For example, here you see a person stepping from one of the coloured circles to the other suggesting travel, much like jumping between stepping stones on a river. Also, if you look carefully the maps seem to be different in colour and layout, but they still give you a feeling that they are just different parts of the same map. Can you guess from the cover what item is used to help traverse these alternate realities? It is highlighted in a very ‘subtle’ way. This is a great example of how even simple graphic design can often be just as effective, descriptive and beautiful as a complex cover design. Great covers tell the reader just enough to draw them in.

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love!

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

“I’m not going to die,” she said. “Not till I’ve seen it.”

“Seen what?”

Her smile widened. “Everything.” 

― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

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This week’s Covetable Cover is John Connolly’s ‘The Book of Lost Things’. It’s a very dark and creepy fairy-tale themed story which i would highly recommend. It’s a great example of a design which weaves hidden items from the story into the cover. Can you find all the keys and items woven into the thorns?

Leave a comment on what you love about this cover, whether you’ve read the book or would like to. I’d also love to hear about the book covers you love and whether you also love the book covers I feature each week.

Feel free to contact me and suggest any beautiful covers you would like to see featured.

A great example of a cover which weaves hidden items from the story into the cover. can you find all the keys and items woven into the thorns?

“Stories wanted to be read, David’s mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.” 

― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

I know it’s only supposed to be the cover, but the inside has a beautiful design too!

“He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun.” 

― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

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Weekly Feature: Covetable Covers.

popcorncrunchyLeave a comment

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but I often do. Quite frankly there are some gorgeous book covers around so I’m not sure you can really blame me. I have bookcases full of books whose stories I love but whose covers are equally as beautiful. There are just some covers that call to me and say ‘Yes, I’m the one for you’. I’ve always admired the illustrators and designers who accurately, intelligently and beautifully reflect a book’s story, atmosphere and events on its cover, without giving too much away. It’s always just enough that when a story has been read, the cover becomes a shared secret between the reader, writer and designer. So in between my fiction and articles I will be featuring some covetable book covers; the ones that make my book-lover heart quiver. I’d love to hear about the book covers you love and whether you also love the book covers I feature each week, so feel free to leave me a comment. Look out for the first covetable cover next week!

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