25 of 2014's Best Book Covers That Left Us Utterly Awestruck

If gazing upon the cover art for Simmone Howell’s Girl Defective doesn’t make you want to go back in time and try out your teenage years as a spunky super-punk, try throwing on oversized glasses and looking again.

Somehow reminiscent of both Chanel perfume and a child’s birthday invitation, the cover art for Dorthe Nors’ Karate Chop wins my vote for most elegant and most endearing.

The design of Playing for the Commandant is so apropos and subtle, it’s a worthwhile reminder of the casual slippage between pleasure and pain that all great literature embodies.

Andy Weir’s The Martian is a smart, sassy, iconic new take on sci-fi that brings the atmosphere of the red planet down to earth. Even if the cover doesn’t suggest all of that to you at once, I’d be willing to bet it will get you to page one.

When I first took up Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör I could not quite take in what I was seeing — the visage is so dead-on, the humor so dark, the wit so wonderfully articulated that it takes a few minutes to fully sink in. Wait for it.

High and Dry practically screams pulp with cover art ripped from the bookshelves of a bygone era. Marrying narrative intimacy with a bold palate and iconic typography, there is nothing not to love about this design.

David Iserson’s Firecracker bring’s retro glamour and minimal magic to cover art both simple and suggestive.

The cover art for Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation is particularly alluring in its intricate depiction of complex and self-perpetuating systemic rigor. Enter at your own risk.

Kim Slater’s Smart reminds me of the very best title sequences from film and television. Artistic, narrative, and highly stylized, this cover art has it all.

Evoking a subtler, more mature Where's Waldo aesthetic, Emily Murdoch’s If You Find Me conjures up no small measure of excitement and anxiety, rendering this delightfully delirious cover art is both nostalgic and new.

Like a love letter from a graphic designer, things on Justin Taylor’s Flings get a little personal and a little distant at once.

Perhaps more than any other title on this list, Scott Herring’s The Hoarders marries medium and message to tremendous effect. Bridging the gap between chaos and creativity, the cover art infuses the content with unexpected power.

There is something ominous and overpowering about the cover art for Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent.

Like origami, the cover art for Leaving the Sea brings creative magic to life with simple construction and stunning effect. You’ll reach out to touch the ridges, even though none of it is real.

With raw power, the cover art crafted for Silence Once Begun speaks louder than words.

There’s something in the brutal, hollow expanse of the cover of All Our Names that marks it as an epic of unusual power and presence. Mengestu’s prose, as well as the beautifully developed plot, more than lives up to the promise of the design.

Although the concept isn’t altogether new or daringly different, I defy you to take a good look at the cover for Lydia Davis’ Can’t and Won’t without turning to the first page. Sometimes classic hits things head on.

Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation marries the oh-so-appealing and the utterly appalling.

The cover art for Keith Ridgway’s Never Love a Gambler is so perfectly abstract that you can barely recognize it the first time around. After a second or a third glance, however, the stark brilliance of the somber cover explodes into view, bringing the pain and promise of the story’s message to bare.

Like a two-dimensional version of a Quentin Tarantino movie, the cover art for Forrest Gander’s Trace is dark, edgy, and so hip it practically bottles its own homebrewed beer.

If there is a single item of clothing that evokes the horror and hostility pockmarking the current American psyche, it has to be the black hoodie. With pain and promise, Claudia Rankine’s evocative cover art depicts this iconic sartorial element to tremendous effect.

The cover art designed for Calvino’s spare, stark essays on life, death, and love in wartime is as brilliant and barren as the masterful narrative gems authored by the Italian writer himself.

Looking out over the retro-inspired landscape of Catherine Lacey’s Nobody is Ever Missing evokes the very look and feel of drowning on a dark summer’s night. Lacey’s cover foretells the sumptuous narrative within, and offers up a visual landscape that is both lush and lurid.

High-concept minimal style meets well-curated conceptual madness on the cover designed for Kirsty Gunn’s Infidelities. Evoking both the claustrophobic confusion of the best mysteries and the modern ambiguities of the contemporary novel, this design leaves nothing to be desired — and virtually everything to be discovered.