Judging a Book by Its Cover: Fall Romance Releases

How important is a book cover? Since I started reading e-books, covers have become much less important to me, but there’s still no underestimating the power of a great one. And there are super talented people working in design, creating unique, evocative, gorgeous covers for some of our favorite authors. Here are some of my favorites that came out recently:
The paperback rerelease of Nora Roberts’s Jewels of the Sun has a particularly fetching face, from the quaint little cottage where so much of the book takes place to the mysteriously roiling clouds above, hinting at the book’s supernatural subplot. I’m tempted to replace my well-worn late-’90s paperback with this gorgeous new edition.
Susanna Kearsley’s books always have stunning covers (seriously, look at them—wouldn’t you just love to hang those on the wall of your secluded island getaway?), and her latest, Season of Storms, is no exception. The woman on the cover, turned away from the viewer, hints at the duality of identity that is the center of the book’s mystery, and with that Gothic mansion in the background, I just want to get lost in this one on the next rainy day.
Fellow readers I trust have been raving about Anna Campbell for years now, and the cover of her new entry in the Sons of Sin series, What a Duke Dares, has won me over. I love the typography, I love her dress, and I’m particularly interested in that shirtless dude right there. It’s all just so lusciously inviting, and yes, I would really like to know what this particular duke is daring.
Sometimes what I’m in the mood for is an angst-fest I can get wrapped up in but not take too seriously, and that’s when I reach for the arty black-and-white new adult covers, like Erin McCarthy’s Shatter. It has a windswept ingénue and a guy who might be Freddie Prinze Jr. in 1998—what’s not to love?
And now for something completely different: the cover of Far Gone, Laura Griffin’s new thriller, features no kissing people, no Gothic mansions, no quaint cottages, just a rose in a shattering vase. It’s a great, arresting image, and tells you what to expect on the inside—conflict, overlaid with sensuality. (And, of course, a serial killer. But that’s implied.)
Finally, I’m a sucker for a baseball book. I’m also a sucker for Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., so you can probably see where I’m going with the cover of The Devil in Denim, by Melanie Scott. Look, I’m allowed to be shallow once in a while.
What romances are you digging into this season?