Keith Hayes, Jason Heuer, Gabriele Wilson, Peter Mendelsund

Saw these in the store this week and loved'em. There's a new series of paperback re-issues of John Fowles novels. The collage for French Lieutenant's Woman is by Eduardo Recife. Ann Beattie is printed on soft touch with deep deboss on the type and ornaments and a super awesome red spot color. Happy Nude Year, everybody!

Houdini, Maf the Dog, Cynic's Guide, and Geometry of Pasta

Happy Holidayz Everybawdy! Boy, BCovAnon has been a lazy ho these past two weeks, drinkin booze and eatin brisket. Thanks for putting put up with us. These gorgeous covers are from a recent trip to my favorite bookstore, 192 Books in Chelsea. Houdini is from Yale Univ Press. Kimberly Glyder designed and illustrated the Marilyn Monroe cover. A Cynic's Guide is designed by the author, Mario DiGiorgio, and Geometry of Pasta is from Quirk. Here are some heartwarming holiday thoughts from A Cynic's Guide:

Under The Dome UK Paperbacks

Saw these in London Heathrow over the summer. I think it's really interesting that the UK publisher took this route to sell the book - basically, creating four covers that look like TV mini-series posters. The US paperback cover took a very different direction:

Zach Dodson: The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

 

 

Wowee wowee wow! Not only is this a "genre-busting novel-in-stories that leaps between small-town suburbs and the outer reaches of outer-space", but the cover actually turns into a miniature mobile of the universe to mirror the title story. Zach's work can be found here. Just published by Featherproof Books.

Ben Gibson, Phaidon, John Gall, Pentagram

 

I just gotsta unload these beauties - they've been on my mind for a while. The Eagles, (Sterling) is a gorgeous oversized hardcover, with an added bonus - a distressed silver foil all over the type and illustration. And check out the $1 sticker on the Yard Sale Book - printed right on the case.

Charles Brock: Blackout and All Clear

A series of sci-fi time-travelling novels. In Blackout, three travellers from the year 2060 become unexpectedly trapped in 1940. They struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission. In All Clear the story continues. I love the mathematical pattern coupled with the photos - the pattern is spot gloss.

Ben Wiseman: Running the Books

New from Knopf Doubleday. A Harvard grad considers becoming a rabbi, but opts for a prison librarian job instead, teaching inmates creative writing on the side. Incredible date stamp illustration!

New Penguin Designers: Alex Merto, Eric White, Jim Tierney, Dan Donohue

In honor of tonight's AIGA Penguin75 talk, I'd like to post some covers by the newest designers working in the Penguin Art Deparment, in order of appearance. Alex Merto (The Old Romantic) works under Helen Yentus at Riverhead. Eric White (Fadeaway Girl) and Jim Tierny (Guided Tour) work under Paul Buckley for Viking/Penguin. Dan Donohue (Super Mario) is working under Joe Perez for Portfolio. Super talented and super fun bunch 'o dudez.

John Fontana: Half Empty

New from Doubleday (illustrator name to come). "In this sardonic collection of essays, Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable) plays the role of a naysayer who tries to convince the reader, with humorous asides and sarcastic one-liners, that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and the nerds and geeks will someday be the globe's financial and political tyrants." (PW)

Kelly Blair: Aurorarama and The Castle in Transylvania

Kelly Blair is rocking the Mellville House with these two gorgeous new books. Aurorarama is a literary sci-fi novel that takes place in 1908. New Venice-"the pearl of the Arctic"-a place of ice palaces and pneumatic tubes, of beautifully ornate carriage-sleds and elegant victorian garb, of long nights and vistas of ice. An ominous black airship hovers over the city, and the Gentlemen (a government organization) are hunting for the author of a radical pamphlet calling for revolt.

Before Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jules Verne, master of science fiction, wrote this eerie tale of the supernatural set in a forgotten valley in the mountains of Transylvania.
In a tiny village, cut off from the outside world, unnatural events are menacing the populace. Apparitions of vampires and zombies terrorize the townsfolk, and they come to believe that the Devil occupies the abandoned castle looming over their town. A visitor to the region, a young count, vows to liberate the town from this thrall-pitting his reason against the forces of evil and superstition. Yet he too must confront the limits of reason when he views, in the depths of the castle, his long-dead love...
This gripping story-a genre-making first-has long been unavailable. Melville House is proud to present it here in a brilliant new translation by award-winning translator Charlotte Mandell.

All descriptions taken from the Melville House website.  Thank you, Bunny, for the headz up.

Gregg Kulick: Journal of a UFO Investigator

Viking, 2011. Printed on uncoated paper with deboss on all the rough pen marks - it feels sculpt debossed. "Against the backdrop of the troubled 1960s, this coming-of-age novel weaves together a compelling psychological drama and vivid outer-space fantasy. Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager, living with a dying mother and a hostile father and without friends. To cope with these circumstances, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister "Three Men in Black", mysterious lake creatures with insectlike carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien/human love child who-if only Danny can keep her alive-will redeem the planet."

Robin Bilardello and Milan Bozic: Everything Is Going To Be Great

"When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert—with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money—finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to “find herself” on a grand tour of Europe." - Harper Perennial, 7/10

Ploy Siripant/Joel Holland: The Unnamed

Arresting new paperback, with handwriting by Joel Holland. Gloss with spot matte on the type. The story of a wealthy happily married man with a strange disease that makes him get up at any hour of the day and set out walking as far as he possibly can go before collapsing.

Gray318: Great House

WW Norton, October 2010. Whoa! I can't wait to see this in the stores...will it be uncoated? I first thought this represented a toppling layer cake, then a house, but now that I've read the plot summary it might be more about this:
"...Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared."

Ben Wiseman: The Hilliker Curse

Terrific new cover from Monsieur Wiseman, which I imagine is inspired by film noir titles.

"The year was 1958. Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name. Her son, James, was ten years old. He hated and lusted after his mother and “summoned her dead.” She was murdered three months later.
 
The Hilliker Curse is a predator’s confession, a treatise on guilt and on the power of malediction, and above all, a cri de cœur. James Ellroy unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown, and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her."

John Fontana: The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise

Noticed the US cover yesterday - a very different look from the current offering at Borders. Illustrator name to follow. The UK cover is below...different title, but I think it's the same book. This is supposed to be a very fun almost child-like novel about a Beefeater in the Tower of London who becomes zoomaster to the Queen's menagerie when they become housed on the Tower grounds. I just visited The Tower, and this is fascinating. There are 36 Beefeaters living there- they are retired members of the military who keep the tower safe and lead the tours, telling you all about Anne Bolyn's head being chopped off at the Tower, people being tortured there, and showing you the awesome Queen's Jewels. Anyway, love these covers.

Lucy Knisley: French Milk

Just finished reading this terrific graphic journal, which I read based solely on the cover. Lucy and her mother spend six weeks in a funky Paris apartment for Lucy's 22nd birthday, where Lucy goes through a post-art-school crisis, and recovers with a good helping of her mother's love and vast quantities of French milk. Like the cover, the book combines photographs and comics, sometimes on facing pages, so we're seeing "reality" and its cartoon version right next to it.

Victor Reinganum: Muriel Spark Novels

Recently fell in love with the new Prime of Miss Jean Brodie cover, designed by Robin Bilardello for Harper Perennial using the illustration from the book's first edition. Reinganum illustrated both Spark covers in the early 60s. I might love Brodie because my friend in high school played the lead in a theater camp production when were 14:
 "The story of an eccentric Edinburgh teacher who inspires cultlike reverence in her young students, the novel was Spark's best-known work. The novel explores themes of innocence, betrayal, and cold rationality opposed to unchecked emotionalism. The story of Miss Brodie's ultimate downfall is told from the unsympathetic perspective of one of her students.

Ben Pierrat: The Fourth Realm Trilogy

Cool paperback series design at top...I also love the hardcover of the latest book, The Golden City, on the bottom. Not sure who the hardcover deigner is yet. This is a sci-fi/fantasy series where a Big Brother-like corporation watches every person and controls everything without anyone's knowledge. Two brothers, who can both travel around different levels of consciousness, figure out what's going on but become enemies when one of them decides to join the evil company in his quest for power.

Peter Brown: The Curious Garden

Finally got my hands on a copy of this beautiful book, which always stopped me in my tracks when I saw it in a shop window. "One day, a curious boy named Liam is out exploring his drab, gray city when he comes across a struggling garden. He decides to help the plants grow, never imagining what he is starting...""

Gray318: Scarlett Thomas Novels

I saw these magnificent paperbacks in London. They sound like academic fantasy-adventure novels. In Mr Y, the heroine reads a cursed book and can then enter people's consciousnesses undetected. In Tragic Universe, which comes to the US in September, the heroine is asked to review a book that promises eternal life. And in Popco, the earliest to be published, the heroine, a brilliant puzzle-solving toy inventor, attempts to create a new toy craze for teenage girls while trying to solve a centuries-old puzzle left in a locket by her grandfather.