Let’s be honest; as designers, we almost definitely will judge books by their covers. When they’re all we have to go on when we’re deciding what to buy at the bookstore, who can blame us – or any book shopper, for that matter?
This post is a celebration of the idea that yes, book covers do matter a great deal. If you’ve read any of these books and have thoughts on how they fit with their covers, we’d love to hear them in the comments!
Beautiful Book Covers and Designs
The Red Pepper in the Hay, by Marion Steiger
Obsession: A History, by Lennard J. Davis
Leather Maiden, by Joe R. Lansdale
Loneliness, by John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick
The Boat, by Nam Le
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
The Letters of Noel Coward, by Noel Coward
The Bedside Book of Beasts, by Graeme Gibson
Beowulf
Garden State, by Rick Moody
Quarrel and Quandary, by Cynthia Ozick
The Verificationist, by Donald Antrim
Killing the Buddha, by Peter Manseau
Flying Leap, by Judy Budnitz
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
The Naked Pint, by Christina Perozzi & Hallie Beaune
One to Nine, by Andrew Hodges
The Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln
At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O’Neill
These Granite Islands, by Sarah Stonich
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Afterwards, by Rachel Seiffert
The Opposite House, by Helen Oyeyemi
Angry Candy, by Harlan Ellison
The Charity Girl, by Michael Lowenthal
The Tattoo Artist, by Jill Ciment
Lolita, by Vladimir Nobokov
Einstein in Love, by Dennis Overbye
Devil in the Details, by Jennifer Traig
Time, by Eva Hoffman
The Chess Machine, by Robert Lohr
This Will Kill You, by H. P. Newquist & Rich Maloof
The Mayor’s Tongue, by Nathaniel Rich
Columbine, by Dave Cullen
Locke, by Shawna Yang Ryan
Race Riots, by Michael L. Ross
A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit
Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg
Against Happiness, by Eric G. Wilson
Tests of Time, by William H. Gass
Utopia, by Thomas More
How to Tell When You’re Tired, by Reg Theriault
Hundred Hit Wonder, by K. I. Borrowman
Traffic Lights, by Cynthia Dawn
Violence: Big Ideas/Small Books, by Slavoj Zizek
The American Civil War, by John Keegan
South of the Border, West of the Sun, by Haruki Murakami
Exile and the Kingdom, by Albert Camus
1984, by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Humbling, by Philip Roth
Nova, by Samuel R. Delany
A Cultural Dictionary of Punk, by Nicholas Rombes
All the Sad Young Literary Men, by Keith Gessen
The Geographer’s Library, by Jon Fasman
Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison
The Crow’s Vow, by Susan Briscoe
State by State, by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey
The Halfway House, by Guillermo Rosales
Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami
From Square One, by Dean Olsher
Everything You Know, by Zoe Heller
Chicago, by Alaa Al Aswany
Swallow, by Miranda Field
Displacement, by Leslie Harrison
Sunset and Sawdust, by Joe R. Lansdale
Missing Men, by Joyce Johnson
The Anatomy of Fascism, by Roberto O. Paxton
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
Iron, Potassium, Nickel, by Primo Levi
Rose, 1944, by Helen Dunmore
Epilogue, by Anne Roiphe
American Nerd, by Benjamin Nugent
Jailbird, by Kurt Vonnegut
Remainder, by Tom McCarthy
The Learners, by Chip Kidd
Animals and Objects In and Out of Water, by Jay Ryan
Oh the Glory of It All, by Sean Wilsey
The Weight of Numbers, by Simon Ings
One Hundred and Forty Five Stories in a Small Box, by Dave Eggers
The Language of Things, by Deyan Sudjic
The Homecoming, by Ray Bradbury
SEE ALSO: 50 Awesome Minimalist Book Covers