Book Expo 2017- Book Covers

Once I return from the annual Book Expo, I love to go through the books I picked up and check them out. There are so many ways to organize them- by publication date, by author name, or by subject.

This year I took notice of the covers. Book cover art has gotten increasingly more intricate and interesting over the years. It's fun to see what clever art directors come up with to catch the reader's eye.

Women looking away from the camera is something that has been popular. This photo shows three books that feature the protagonist looking away from the camera, giving the effect of longing. I'm patricularly interested in reading Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill, about a female lawyer in 1920's India, and these three books are all historical fiction.

From woman facing away on the cover, we have covers where we only see the backs of our protagonists here. Need to Know, about a female CIA agent involved in Russian intrigue seems to be a timely read. (I believe Charlize Theron has optioned this for a movie.) Thrillers tend to like to use this on the cover.

This next one is a new one- covers featuring people with no faces. I guess this can be interpreted as protagonists who are enigmatic?

Then we get the covers with the faces up close and personal, like these two striking books. 

Instead of people, these covers feature buildings on their covers. Brendan Mathews' debut novel The World of Tomorrow, with its Irish immigrant story set in 1939 New York City, looks to be this year's We Are Not Ourselves. Speaking of Irish,  I can never resist a Alice McDermott novel, an Oswego State graduate.

Trees and branches without their leaves will be very popular in the coming months. I'm really looking forward to reading Tayari Jones' An American Marriage. Her previous novel Silver Sparrow was just phenomenal. Eleanor Henderson's The Twelve-Mile Straight is another one I can't wait to read, as I loved her Ten Thousand Saints.

From trees, we move to birds on these covers. Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done retells the Lizzie Borden story and I am intrigued by that one.

This vibrant red color is sure to catch the eyes of readers perusing bookstore shelves. Leni Zumas' Red Clocks is geared towards readers of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and will surely benefit from the Hulu adaptation of that book.

These books capitalize on the Gone Girl familiarity by putting girl in the title, but none are of the thriller genre. The Radium Girls is a narrative nonfiction book that will appeal to readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and the cover of The Girls in the Picture is just stunning.

Married women seems to be a lively topic as these three book titles suggest. I can't wait to read Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher as I have been a fan since Little Children. (And his HBO series The Leftovers just knocked me out.)

Future Book Expo post will discuss some of the events that took place at the Expo. If you attended Book Expo, what were your favorites? Beth Fish Reads has highlighted some of the books she is looking forward to here and here.