They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover... and that is very true... but you should totally love these books for the pretty covers. This month's theme is rather subjective, but I can't help but want to share books with excellent cover art.
The Bone Clocks
David Mitchell
Following a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting on the war in Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Leaving the Sea
Ben Marcus
Euphoria
Lily King
From New England Book Award winner Lily King comes a breathtaking novel about three young anthropologists of the ‘30’s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives. English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers’ deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell’s poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control.
The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah
The Island of the Day Before
Umberto Eco
The Monsters of Templeton
Lauren Groff
Other Pretty Book Covers
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
The Clockwork Universe - Edward Dolnick
Cubed - Nikil Saval
Delicious - Ruth Reichel
The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean
An Atheist's History of Belief - Matthew Kneale
Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue
What If? - Randall Munroe
David Mitchell
Following a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting on the war in Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Leaving the SeaBen Marcus
By turns hilarious and heartfelt, dark and illuminative, Ben Marcus’s Leaving the Sea
is a ground breaking collection of stories from one of the single most
vital, extraordinary, and unique writers of his generation. In the heartfelt “I Can Say Many
Nice Things,” a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative
writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian
“Rollingwood,” a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill
infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In
“Watching Mysteries with My Mother,” a son meditates on his mother’s
mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her
side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we
watch as the narrator’s marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to
the brink of suicide. Surreal and tender, terrifying and
life-affirming, Leaving the Sea is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.
Lily King
From New England Book Award winner Lily King comes a breathtaking novel about three young anthropologists of the ‘30’s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives. English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers’ deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell’s poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone’s control.
The NightingaleKristin Hannah
In the quiet village of
Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he
heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade
France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans
of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon
the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and
her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food
or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to
make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a
rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the
reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the
unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the
French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as
only the young can...completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle
joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and
again to save others.
Umberto Eco
After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto
della Griva finds himself shipwrecked-on a ship. Swept from the
Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in
the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he
discovers, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different
cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante,
his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess
move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his
illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the
writing of love letters, and blasphemy.
In this fascinating, lyrical
tale, Umberto Eco tells of a young dreamer searching for love and
meaning; and of a most amazing old Jesuit who, with his clocks and maps,
has plumbed the secrets of longitudes, the four moons of Jupiter, and
the Flood. In 1643,
in still-uncharted Antipodean waters, Roberto, a young nobleman in
exile, survives the wreck of his ship and lands on another ship, the
mysterious and deserted Daphne, which is anchored just across the Date
Line from an island surrounded by treacherous reef. If Roberto can reach
the island, when time is always yesterday, can he correct his past?
Simultaneous hardcover release from Harcourt Brace.
The Monsters of Templeton
Lauren Groff
In the wake of a wildly
disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor, Willie Upton
arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in storybook Templeton,
New York, looking to hide in the one place to which she swore she'd
never come back. As soon as she arrives, though, a prehistoric monster
surfaces in Lake Glimmerglass, changing the very fabric of the town.
What's more, Willie's hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mother, Vi, tells
her a secret she's been hiding for nearly thirty years: that Willie's
father wasn't the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led
her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town.
As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth
about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep
when past and present blur, dark mysteries come to light, and the
shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed. One
dark summer dawn, at the exact moment that an enormous monster dies in
Lake Glimmerglass, twenty-eight-year-old Willie (nee Wilhemina) Upton
returns to her hometown of Templeton, NY in disgrace. She expects to be
able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for
generations, but Willie then learns that the story her mom, Vi, had
always told her about her father has all been a lie. He wasn't the
one-night stand Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely.
Someone from this very town. As Willie digs for the truth
about her lineage, voices from the town's past — both sinister and
disturbing — rise up around her to tell their sides of the story. In the
end, dark secrets come to light, past and present blur, old mysteries
are finally put to rest, and the surprising truth about more than one
monster is revealed.
Other Pretty Book Covers
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
The Clockwork Universe - Edward Dolnick
Cubed - Nikil Saval
Delicious - Ruth Reichel
The Disappearing Spoon - Sam Kean
An Atheist's History of Belief - Matthew Kneale
Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue
What If? - Randall Munroe
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