{"id":2641,"date":"2025-04-30T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T12:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/?p=2641"},"modified":"2025-08-01T15:15:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:15:57","slug":"30-of-the-best-book-covers-for-april-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2025\/04\/30\/30-of-the-best-book-covers-for-april-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"30 of the Best Book Covers for April 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been reading this column for any length of time, you\u2019ve no doubt seen Lu\u00edsa Dias\u2019 book covers. From her home base of Lisbon, she has been putting a fresh spin on genre work and weird fiction at large\u2014so this month we checked in with her about her jackets for the independent house Wild Hunt Books<\/a>, in particular her designs for the publisher\u2019s pocket-sized Northern Weird Series.<\/a><\/p>\n

The rest of our favorite covers of April\u2014including some we missed last month (ope!)\u2014follow.<\/p>\n

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When did you start working with Wild Hunt? It feels in some ways like you are helping to redefine the look of horror\/weird fiction, or at least putting your own signature on it.<\/strong>
I started working with Wild Hunt in 2023, and the first cover I designed for them was Bear Season<\/em> by Gemma Fairclough, which was such a brilliant introduction to the kind of stories they\u2019re publishing. It\u2019s always exciting to collaborate with a press that\u2019s carving out a distinct space, and I\u2019m really grateful to be a small part of that.<\/p>\n

And thank you for the kind words! That\u2019s a huge compliment. I think horror and weird fiction deserve covers that feel as intriguing as the stories themselves. I\u2019m just trying to reflect that energy in a way that feels true to both the genre and my own style. I\u2019ve always been drawn to imagery and art in general that feels unsettling without being overt. I love when a cover hints that something\u2019s wrong, but doesn\u2019t spell it out. Some covers that have really stuck with me, and that continue to influence how I think about mood and tone, are Ghost Wall<\/em> by Sarah Moss (designed by Alex Merto), Lapvona<\/em> by Ottessa Moshfegh (designed by Stephanie Ross), Mouthful of Birds <\/em>by Samanta Schweblin (designed by Stephen Brayda), just to name a few. They all hold tension in such striking, quiet ways.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always loved weird fiction, especially short stories. The book that really shaped my love for this genre was Completely Unexpected Tales<\/em> by Roald Dahl (though it was disappointing when I eventually learned about his problematic legacy). As for right now, I\u2019m so lucky to work with publishers like Wild Hunt Books and Creature Publishing, where I get to design for the kind of stories I genuinely love to read\u2014and one of the perks is getting to read them before they hit the shelves. I guess what I love about weird fiction is how it unsettles you in quiet, surprising ways. It challenges what we think of as normal, it redefines fear, and it rarely offers easy answers. That sense of strangeness definitely feeds into how I approach my covers. I want them to feel like an invitation, but one that\u2019s laced with something just a little bit off.<\/p>\n

Tell us a bit about the Northern Weird Project.<\/strong>
The Northern Weird Project is all about spotlighting writers based in the North of England who are also writing about the North. Ariell Cacciola, the publisher and editorial director of Wild Hunt Books, is the force behind it. She\u2019s doing incredible work, both with the press and through this initiative, and really deserves credit for pushing it forward. UK publishing is still heavily concentrated in London and the Southeast, which affects whose stories get told and supported. This project is a small but important step toward shifting that imbalance.<\/p>\n

How did you define or outline the aesthetic that you would use for the books in the series?<\/strong>
From the start, the concept was for pocket-sized books with minimal but striking designs. Each cover would feature a strong central image alongside the title and author, with the visual extending onto the back.<\/p>\n

I worked through a few layout options, and we landed on this one. Punchy typeface and colors contrasting with dark, unsettling imagery. I also loved the idea of adding small silhouettes peeking through windows or standing at a distance as a way to introduce a sense of presence and unease. That contrast became a defining thread across the series, helping keep things visually cohesive while giving each cover its own atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Where did you draw inspiration?<\/strong>
The brief came with some fantastic references that really helped shape the direction. Covers like Fire Season<\/em> by Leyna Krow (designed by Colin Webber), Rainbow Black<\/em> by Maggie Thrash (designed by Joanne O\u2019Neill) and Dead Animals<\/em> by Phoebe Stuckes (designed by Lucy Scholes) all capture that balance of minimal, distinctive imagery paired with a bold title treatment. They were a great starting point for thinking about how to make something small in scale still feel visually impactful.<\/p>\n

Turning specifically to the new cover for The Retreat<\/em>, what was the brief for this book?<\/strong>
As with the other books in the series, the brief left plenty of space to explore. The Retreat <\/em>follows Richard as he investigates a mysterious wellness center in remote Cumbria, convinced it played a role in his sister\u2019s death years earlier. The story is layered with tension, memory and questions of control.<\/p>\n

Visually, the focus is on the retreat itself, which was a manor house set in a mountainous landscape with rivers around it, and the silhouette of a woman outside, hinting at something hidden or unresolved. There was room to interpret the setting in different ways, which made it a really engaging one to work on.<\/p>\n

Did you draw or paint the manor featured on the cover, or source it elsewhere?<\/strong>
I sourced the manor from a stock website. I love working with photography and transforming it into something a little more surreal.<\/p>\n

What else is going on in the design?<\/strong>
A wellness retreat is meant to be calm and restorative, but that\u2019s not the story being told here. To translate that, the design definitely leans into that contradiction to build tension and (hopefully!) sets the tone for the story. I wanted to play with contrast and symmetry, by having this dark eerie setting through an impossibly bright sky.<\/p>\n

How about the type treatment for the series?<\/strong>
The font used across the series is King Sans. It\u2019s bold and expressive, which makes it a great fit! I feel like it holds its own without overpowering the imagery. There\u2019s a strength to it that pairs well with the mood of these stories.<\/p>\n

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Cover design by Arsh Raziuddin<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Rodrigo Corral<\/a> and Giacomo Girardi<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Jared Bartman<\/a>; painting by Camille Corot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Tyler Comrie<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Jack Smyth<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Matt Dorfman<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Jaya Miceli<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Nicole Caputo<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover designs by Jonathan Pelham<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

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Cover design by David Drummond<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Anna Morrison<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design\/illustration by Henry Petrides<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Victoria Maxfield<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Madeline Partner<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Sarah Schulte<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Jaya Miceli<\/a>; art by Hakan Ecevit<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by David Pearson<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Jared Bartman<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Cecilia Carlstedt<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Alison Forner<\/a>; photograph by May Truong<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Nicole Caputo<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Steve Coventry-Panton <\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Mohamed Zakaria Tebbal<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Cover design by Sarah Schulte<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The post 30 of the Best Book Covers for April 2025<\/a> appeared first on PRINT Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been reading this column for any length of time, you\u2019ve no doubt seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2672,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions\/2672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}