The 15 Best Book Covers of April

Another month of books, another month of book covers. Here are the ones that have brightened up an impossibly cold and rainy April:

Rav Grewal-Kök, The Snares (Random House, April 1)

Simple, daring, and not a little bit frightening.

Vauhini Vara, Searches; cover design by Andrew LeClair and Linda Huang (Pantheon, April 8)

A very good idea for the cover of this particular book.

John Hickey, Big Chief; cover design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster, April 8)

Bold and appealing.

Katie Kitamura, Audition; cover design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead, April 8)

It seems like just a blend of the abstract and the widely appealing, but once you’ve read the book you realize how good it is.

Kevin Nguyen, My Documents; cover design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World, April 8)

So bonkers you can’t help but want to pick it up.

Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial; cover design by Abby Weintraub (Norton, April 8)

Weirder than it looks at first glance.

Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker; cover illustration by Amber Day (Atlantic Monthly Press, April 15)

A genuinely funny book cover, on multiple levels.

Ishion Hutchinson, Fugitive Tilts; cover design by Na Kim (FSG, April 15)

An elegant all-text solution.

Julia Elliott, Hellions; cover design by Beth Steidle (Tin House Books, April 15)

I love the intensity of the pattern and color story and bleed here. Also the gator, of course.

Jo Harkin, The Pretender; cover design by John Gall (Knopf, April 22)

The combination of crop and doubling and the hand-drawn text just sings. (See also the UK cover, designed by Greg Heinimann.)

Ingeborg Bachmann, tr. Tess Lewis, The Honditsch Cross; cover design by Gabriela Pesqueira (New Directions, April 22)

The delicate lines and desaturated underlay!

Marie-Helene Bertino, Exit Zero; cover image from “The Forest River-Bottom to Hilltop (mural)” (FSG Originals, April 22)

I love the porthole view, as well as the image, which, as Bertino wrote on Instagram, comes from a mural of the Catskills in the American Museum of Natural History.

Lydia Millet, Atavists cover design by Steve Attardo(Norton, April 22)

Deranged in the very best way.

César Vallejo, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, The Eternal Dice; cover design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions, April 22)

What can I say, I’m just a sucker for these little circular cutouts, big and small.

Anthony Passeron, tr. Frank Wynne, Sleeping Children; cover design by Rodrigo Corral (FSG, April 29)

Looks like a film still of a dream I had once.