Tag: book cover

Book Covers, News

See the cover for Instruction Manual for Future Lover by Madeline Garfinkle

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Instruction Manual for Future Lover, Madeline Garfinkle‘s debut novel, is a sharp, funny exploration of modern dating, self-improvement, and the search for love. Determined to find a date for an upcoming wedding, a twenty-nine-year-old woman throws herself into dating apps, personal reinvention, and the chaos of romantic possibility, only to discover that the person she needs to find might be herself.

Garfinkle is a Brooklyn-based writer who received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Washington Square Review and elsewhere. Instruction Manual for Future Lover will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 18, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Instruction Manual for Future Lover, designed by Math Monahan. Below, Garfinkle discusses her love of minimalist covers, the novel’s exploration of performance and identity, and how a woman dancing with a ghostlike partner captures the longing and self-discovery at the heart of the story.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Steelhead by Colby Cotton

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See the cover for Steelhead by Colby Cotton

Colby Cotton’s debut poetry collection, Steelhead, is a meditation on grief, loneliness, and the lasting impact of loss. Written in the aftermath of a childhood friend’s death by suicide, the collection moves through dreamlike landscapes where the boundaries between life and the afterlife blur, exploring the search for a home we can never truly return to.

It will be released by University of Pittsburgh Press on February 16, 2027, and is available for pre-order now.

Cotton is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University whose work has appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Originally from New York, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Steelhead, designed by Alex Wolfe and featuring photography by Francisco Gonzalez Camacho. Below, Cotton discusses the rural landscapes that shaped his poems, the photograph that immediately resonated with him, and how a simple ripple in water captures the collection’s exploration of grief, memory, and mortality.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Minton Manor by Mollie Hawkins

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See the cover for Minton Manor by Mollie Hawkins

Minton Manor, the debut novel by Mollie Hawkins, explores complicated family dynamics, manufactured realities, and the unraveling of a seemingly perfect world. Centered on a family and their grand estate, the novel explores what happens when the foundations of a carefully constructed life begin to crumble.

Minton Manor will be published by Blair on April 13, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Minton Manor, designed by Jason Heuer. Below, Hawkins discusses drawing inspiration from films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Parasite, her fascination with houses and dysfunctional families, and how the final design captures a family desperately trying to hold on as their world comes apart.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Welcome Home, Stranger by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

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See the cover for Welcome Home, Stranger by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Yoojin Grace Wuertz’s Welcome Home, Stranger is a YA novel about family, identity, and the complicated bond between two second cousins raised worlds apart. Yeji grew up in North Korea, while Ellie grew up in North Jersey, and when the two live together in Leonia for a year, they must navigate the histories, expectations, and cultural differences shaping their shared family.

Wuertz is the author of Everything Belongs to Us. Welcome Home, Stranger will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers on May 25, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Welcome Home, Stranger, illustrated by Mozza with art direction by Aurora Parlagreco. Below, Wuertz discusses the cover’s layered depiction of Yeji and Ellie, its play with scale and cultural artifacts, and how the final design captures both the friction and intimacy at the heart of the novel.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for The Ninth Island by Andrew Chi Keong Yim

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See the cover for The Ninth Island by Andrew Chi Keong Yim

Andrew Chi Keong Yim’s The Ninth Island is a poetry collection about displacement, inheritance, and the search for home, following his family from Hawaiʻi to Las Vegas while reaching across generations to his Chinese American great-grandmother.

Yim is a poet and teacher whose work explores family, place, and the forces that shape Hawaiʻi and its diaspora. The Ninth Island will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press on February 9, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of The Ninth Island, designed by Alex Wolfe with photography by Patrick Nevada. Below, Yim discusses images of Hawaiʻi, Las Vegas’s culture of facsimile, and how an empty pair of car seats came to capture the book’s themes of absence, longing, and displacement.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for The Last Stampede by EC Dorgan

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See the cover for The Last Stampede by EC Dorgan

EC Dorgan’s The Last Stampede is a surreal, genre-bending literary horror novel about grief, kinship, and reckoning in a dystopian near future. Four Métis strangers find their lives colliding in the aspen country surrounding a prairie city: a dying man haunted by tragedy, a revenge-driven horse woman whose broncos manifest from her arms, a corporate executive desperate to protect his company, and a young woman searching for her place in the world while facing a mysterious illness. When a global tech company begins destroying the natural landscape to replace it with data centres, the connections between the four emerge as they fight for revenge, redemption, and survival.

Dorgan writes weird fiction and horror on Treaty 6 Territory in the Edmonton area. Her work has appeared in The Dark, Augur Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, and numerous anthologies. Named a Writers’ Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2024, she received the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story in 2025. She is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta.

The Last Stampede will be published by House of Anansi on April 27, 2027. It is available for pre-order now.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of The Last Stampede, designed by Alysia Shewchuk and forthcoming from House of Anansi. Below, Dorgan discusses the vivid image of a horse woman and her broncos that followed her throughout the writing process, the family photographs that helped inspire the design, and how the finished cover blends Western imagery, the Canadian prairie landscape, and the novel’s surreal, dystopian world.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

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See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

In her debut short story collection, Ripples into the Wild, Abby Manzella explores man-made disasters, climate change, the pandemic, and imagined future catastrophes. Moving between realism and the speculative, the collection features everything from children telling ghost stories to characters confronting actual monsters while considering what might exist beyond loss and grief.

Manzella is a Pushcart Prize winner whose writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her debut collection is set to be published by Cornerstone Press on February 23, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Ripples into the Wild’s cover, designed by Paige Biever and Ross Tangedal, along with a Q&A with Manzella about its creation.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover and read an exclusive excerpt of The Joplin Horror by Jason Kaleko

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Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover of The Joplin Horror, the debut novel from award-winning screenwriter Jason Kaleko. This cinematic psychological horror follows a crew of graverobbers who descend into an ancient mausoleum expecting an easy score, only to find an impossible labyrinth, disappearing memories, and something hunting them from just beyond the light.

Perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski, Chuck Wendig, and Paul Tremblay, The Joplin Horror is a claustrophobic descent into buried trauma, fractured reality, and a place that seems determined to keep its visitors forever. It will be published by DAW on May 25, 2027. It is available for preorder now.

Debutiful is honored to reveal The Joplin Horror‘s cover, designed by Adam Auerbach, along with an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Sensual World by Lauren Friedlander

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See the cover for Sensual World by Lauren Friedlander

Lauren Friedlander’s debut novel, Sensual World, is a surreal Midwestern campus gothic about ambition, obsession, and the terrifying lengths we’ll go in the name of art. Seventeen-year-old Bet Cowl escapes her remote Kansas hometown after discovering the manuscript of a supposedly cursed play and earning admission to the infamous acting conservatory founded by its playwright, Una Flood. There, Bet falls into an intense friendship with former child star Helen as the two endure increasingly extreme demands on their bodies, minds, and relationship. Queer, strange, and darkly funny, Sensual World asks what happens when artistic devotion begins to look a lot like self-destruction.

Friedlander is a writer and graphic designer from Kansas who now lives in New York. She is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Sensual World will be published by Catapult on March 23, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Sensual World, designed by Victoria Maxfield and art-directed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Friedlander discusses the visual moodboard that accompanied her through eight years of writing, the artistic references that shaped the novel’s strange world, and the uncanny experience of finally seeing her book with a face of its own.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

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See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

Kelly Kearsley’s debut novel, Talented and Gifted, is a funny, sharp look at failure, reinvention, and the strange promises of startup culture. Molly Wells was once the queen of mom blogging—until an ill-advised post about her ex-husband’s affair tanked her career. Three years later, a ghostwriting gig at a buzzy Portland startup that makes apps and assessments for gifted kids offers Molly a shot at professional redemption. But as the company’s money troubles, questionable personalities, and hidden agendas pile up, Molly’s midlife reboot becomes increasingly complicated.

Kearsley began her career as a business journalist before becoming a ghostwriter for Fortune 500 tech and finance companies. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Forbes, and elsewhere, and she writes the humor newsletter Does That Make Sense? Talented and Gifted will be published by Grand Central Publishing on April 27, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Talented and Gifted’s cover, designed by Sandra Chiu, along with a Q&A with Kearsley about its creation.

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