dailynewsnblog
This year at Literary Hub, we published the tenth iteration of a fan favorite end of year list: the best book covers of the year, as chosen by some of our favorite book cover designers. This feature was one of the first things I pitched as a new editor at Lit Hub, and I have to say I’m still proud of it: cover designers are artists, and they are integral to the book industry, and they almost never get the credit they deserve. (Half the time their names aren’t even listed anywhere except in tiny print on the physical jacket; I know this because every month I have to hunt for them.) It’s also, forgive me, rather heartwarming and inspiring: every year, the designers I ask are always so generous and curious in uplifting one another, and every year they hype books I’ve never seen before. It is fun.
Anyway, this year I realized that I had a decade’s worth of data, so I decided to take a look back at the last ten years of book covers by means of—you guessed it—another list.
In 2016, I asked 17 designers to talk about their favorite book covers of the year, and they came back with 60 individual covers. Not too shabby—but every year, the list grew, both in contributors and in total covers: we highlighted 64 covers in 2017, 75 in 2018, 101 in 2021, 139 in 2023. This feature has now exploded—in 2025, I cajoled 52 designers into participating, and they mentioned a whopping 173 different choices—but what the hell. We deserve nice things.
To create this list-of-lists, I included the books with the first, second, and third most mentions from each individual year; this seemed the fairest way. I did pull out a few fun stats, because that’s my thing:
The most mentioned book covers of the last 10 years:
First place (12 mentions):
Szilvia Molnar, The Nursery; cover design by Linda Huang (Pantheon, March 2023)
Second place (3-way tie, 9 mentions):
Melissa Broder, The Pisces; cover design by Rachel Willey (Hogarth, May 2018)
Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police; cover design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon, August 2019)
Nico Walker, Cherry; cover design by Janet Hansen, artwork by Daniel Bjugård (Knopf, August 2018)
Third place (5-way tie, 8 mentions):
Joe Brainard, I Remember; cover design by David Pearson (Daunt Books, July 2025)
Anna North, Outlawed; cover design by Rachel Willey (Bloomsbury, January 2021)
Pola Oloixarac, tr. Adam Morris, Mona; cover design by Thomas Colligan (FSG, March 2021)
Olga Ravn, The Employees; cover design by Paul Sahre (New Directions, February 2023)
Jeff VanderMeer, The Southern Reach series (10th Anniversary redesign); cover design by Pablo Delcan (Picador, July 2024)
The designers with the most books on the list:
First place (tie, 7 books each):
Na Kim
Lauren Peters-Collaer
Second place (5 books):
Rachel Willey
Third place (4-way tie, 4 books each):
John Gall
Janet Hansen
Linda Huang
Alex Merto
One more fun fact before the full list—only two authors have more than one book on the list: Brit Bennett and Lidia Yuknavitch. Both have two, and all four books were published by Riverhead, and funnily enough, both earlier books (The Mothers, 2016 and Verge, 2020, respectively) were designed by Rachel Willey, while both later books (The Vanishing Half, 2020, and Thrust, 2022) were designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer. This has been your fun fact.
All right, without any further ado, the most admired book covers from the last ten years:
Shop the List on Bookshop.org
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First place (7 mentions):
Second place (tie, 5 mentions each):
Third place (5-way tie, 3 mentions each):
First place (5 mentions):
Second place (4-way tie, 4 mentions each):
Third place (tie, 3 mentions each):
First place (tie, 9 mentions each):
Second place (6 mentions):
Third place (tie, 5 mentions each):
First Place (9 mentions):
Second Place (6 mentions):
Third Place (5 mentions):
First Place (3-way tie, 5 mentions each)
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Second Place (5-way tie, 4 mentions each)
Hiroko Oyamada, tr. David Boyd, The Hole; cover design by Janet Hansen (New Directions, October)
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Third Place (7-way tie, 3 mentions each)
First Place (tie, 8 mentions each):
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Second Place (6 mentions):
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Third Place (5-way tie, 5 mentions each):
First place (tie, six mentions each):
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Second place (3-way tie, five mentions each):
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Third place (9-way tie (!), four mentions each):
First place (12 mentions):
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Second place (8 mentions):
Olga Ravn, The Employees; cover design by Paul Sahre (New Directions, February)
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Third place (tie, 6 mentions each):
![Greg Jackson, The Dimensions of a Cave (Granta Books [UK], October 26) Design by Jamie Keenan](https://s26162.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/81rknU9kZL._SL1500_.jpg)
Celina Baljeet Basra, Happy; cover design by Alex Merto (Astra House, November)
First place (8 mentions):
Jeff VanderMeer, The Southern Reach series (10th Anniversary redesign); cover design by Pablo Delcan (Picador, July)
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Second place (tie, 7 mentions each):
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!; cover design by Linda Huang (Knopf, January)
Liz Moore, The God of the Woods; cover design by Grace Han (Riverhead, July)
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Third place (tie, 6 mentions each):
Solvej Balle, tr. Barbara J. Haveland, On the Calculation of Volume (Books 1 & 2); cover design by Matt Dorfman (New Directions, November)
‘Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots; cover design by Sarahmay Wilkinson, art by Day Briere (W.W. Norton, May)
First place (8 mentions):
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Second place (tie, 6 mentions each):
Rose Keating, Oddbody; cover design by Math Monahan (Simon & Schuster, July)
Caren Beilin, Sea, Poison; cover design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions, October)
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Third place (3-way tie, 5 mentions):
Lucas Schaefer, The Slip; cover design by Jack Smyth (Simon & Schuster, June)
Michael Clune, Pan; cover design by Janet Hansen (Penguin Press, July)
Katie Kitamura, Audition; cover design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead, April)
