Nine top art-and-book-cover matches

"[S]ometimes a savvy [book cover] designer finds an extant piece of art that’s so perfect it seems as if it were created just to be put on the jacket," writes Gabe Habash for PWxyz, the news blog of Publishers Weekly. One of his top nine examples to fit that bill:

The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

The art on the cover: Profile of a Young Woman by Giovanni Boldini

Published earlier this year, The Accursed is one of 2013′s best covers and also one of its creepiest, just by the simple decision of cutting off the image just below the young woman’s eyes. According to an interview in the Washington Post, Ecco’s art director Allison Saltzman wanted the cover to be both distinctive and capture the time period of the novel: “‘I also wanted to convey the book’s hothouse atmosphere of women succumbing to rumor and hysteria, temptation and eroticism.’ For Saltzman, Boldini’s painting evoked ‘the swooning vulnerability’ of the characters. ‘I also liked its ambiguity: Is she swooning in agony or in ecstasy?’”

In that same Post article, we get a look at the…not as good UK cover.

Read about another book and cover on Habash's list.

--Marshal Zeringue