I think we all know that book covers aren't quite the same as album covers. From all I can gather, authors rarely get to choose their covers. Many times the covers make very little sense and almost look like the people picking them never read the book (THE GIRL NEXT DOOR).
Are there any covers that you just love, even if they don't make any sense?
I love the covers for .Carrion Comfort with the birds flying away from the moon with the clouds underneath it that look like a skull.
I also have to admit a soft spot for that terrible The Girl Next Door cover. It's so silly that you just have to love it.

The cover was the only good thing about Lake Mountain.

I love the book cover for Lisey's Story by Stephen King. The book cover, not the book jacket. For me it enhanced the world within.

King's 1st ed. of Bag of Bones has a marvelous cover of the profile of a screaming, pale woman. (I have no clue how to add images to posts.)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/7276...

I also like:
Berserk by Tim Lebbons (deranged looking blonde girl)
The Cannibal Within by Mark Mirabello (painting of Saturn Devouring His Children)

Tressa wrote: "King's 1st ed. of Bag of Bones has a marvelous cover of the profile of a screaming, pale woman. (I have no clue how to add images to posts.)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/7276...
..."

Tressa-I've seen that cover at the bookstore. I haven't read Bag of Bones yet.

Tressa, when you are replying there is an "add book/author" link above the box. Just click that and then search for the book or author. It won't add the image, but it will make a nice, clean link to the book you're referring to.

I do like that Bag of Bones cover, too. I like the use of white covers on a some of the newer editions of his work. It's so cliche to use a black cover on a horror novel, and the white ones really stand out on the shelf.

Scott wrote: "Tressa, when you are replying there is an "add book/author" link above the box. Just click that and then search for the book or author. It won't add the image, but it will make a nice, clean link..."

Thanks!!! I re-edited my original post to work properly!!!

Thanks, Scott. I always forget about that handy html guide.

I get tired of black horror covers, too. When I'm searching the jumbled shelves at a thrift store, I can always pick out the suspense or horror books because of the boring black covers. Of course, if they were the different colors of the rainbow, I wouldn't be able to just scan and pull.

Rachel, that's one of my favorite covers and it's the last King book I read. I really enjoyed it, though.

Some of King's books have really good covers. I loved the original covers for Desperation and The Regulators. And my beloved hardback 1st ed. of The Stand has Good and Evil dueling on the cover.

Scott, what? No link? After your informative reminder? I'm lazy this morning but I'm still going to look it up.

Yet oddly it is one of the "prized" books in my collection!!! LOL!

Crap! Scott, I was deleting a comment I made and accidentally deleted your last post that pokes fun at The Girl Next Door's book cover. So sorry!

The link for GIRL is in my original post now.

I've never seen that TGND cover before. That sux. The copy I read showed a view looking down through some trees at an outline of a lighted window on the grass. I thought it was pretty effective--shows that we don't know what goes on behind closed doors in other people's houses.

The infamous cheerleader cover is the original paperback cover. It is so typical of your standard Horror cover from the 80's. The book though, as we now know, was so not your typical Horror novel from the 80's. But sheer absurdity of the cover is what I love about it so much. I just wonder what people's reaction was originally back then when buying it just for the heck of it and expecting a dumb Horror story about zombie cheerleaders!

Carl, that cover makes no sense because the abused girl wasn't a cheerleader, was she? Or am I getting her confused with the real victim, Sylvia, who was slightly handicapped, neglected,and shy and definitely not cheerleader material?

Nope, no cheerleaders in the book anywhere! It's also a very silly cover, and I don't remember smiling at any single point while reading that book.

Nope, no smiles here either. I grimaced a few times and felt my blood pressure go up, but the book elicited no chuckles from me.

Oops! S'okay, Tressa. I was wondering what happened!

I think that back then, and still today to some extent, there was little or no communication (or control) between the author and the artist doing the cover. Most likely the publishing house commissioned someone, gave them an extremely vague idea of what was in the book, and told them to do a cover. Covers nowadays tend to be more relevant but every so often you still see one that makes you go "huh?"

I would also bet popularity of an author counts to the cover also. I would guess that King, Grisham, Rowling, Meyers and their kind have more say than a new author does, or even a minor seller.
I do wonder what kind of say some authors have though. Leisure books seems like a cool company and I could see them giving authors final say. And if the do...then what exactly is Brian Keene's infatuation with grabbing hands and forearms???

I think Leisure books have some interesting covers. I loved Lee's The Golem book cover.

Oh yeah, Leisure is a top notch company for sure! Keene's covers just confuse me a bit.

A lot of the Leisure covers seem so generic--a car on a barren road, a dark house--that they could go on practically any book. The scene depicted on Thomas Tessier's Rapture, while a nice cover, does not occur anywhere in the story. And the one for Finishing Touches is an obvious "sex sells" cover.

Michael Whelan has always been a popular cover artist for authors because he read every book he worked on, and took pains to get the details right. I remember reading that Anne McCaffrey was thrilled that someone had finally gotten her dragons right (they don't look at all like traditional fantasy dragons.)

I always felt Leisure books tell too much by their covers. I wish they would let a bit of of a mystery to their covers to get me to pick up the book because when I look at their books, I usually look at the authors' names. ("Ooo look, another Edward Lee's novel! Hey, Jack Ketchum's latest over here!")

I really like the primitive cover of Tin Drum, in which a childish drawing of a boy playing the drum is shown in the cover of Gunter Grass's book. Also I would vote for the cover of a child huddling in terror, a simple sketch drawing in the cover for William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

I tend to be drawn to mysterious covers with childish drawings or sketches because I like the creepy factor that something that looks harmless could scare the pants off of me. Stephen King's earliest works have these kind of covers like Night Shift, and Skeleton Crew and Salemn's Lot. I love the crystal outline of a girl's face with a crisomn drop at the corner of her lips.

These kinds of covers are enough for me to peruse the book's beginning. Also, the cartoony cover of a main street in Jonathan Carroll's, The Land of Laughs, with the grinning white pit terrier got my attention.

These kinds of covers inspired my own cover that I drew with crayons.

I always hated the paperback reprints of King's books. Some of them just had the title across the front.

I love the cover for Sigler's Infected. It's an eye in the middle of a bright blue triangle. It's what caught my eye and made me read this author for the first time.

Snuff has an interesting cover. The title tells you all you need to know, but the cover gives a terrifying visual.

Why are kids so damn scary? Parents, ever feel a presence at 3 a.m. and wake up to find your kid standing by your bed, sucking his thumb and staring at you? Sheesh.

Because they are lethal and will resort to torture to find out what is the meaning of life.

While I love the hardcover of Lisey's Story I really hate the paperback. Lisey's Story A Novel

You know which King covers I really hate--those trade paperbacks with the Lichtenstein-style pop art covers. They aren't appropriate at all.

Here is my favorite Lord of the Flies cover.

Because they are lethal and will resort to torture to find out what is the meaning of life.

Hey, you must have watched the recent foreign movie Them, too!

Scott wrote: "You know which King covers I really hate--those trade paperbacks with the Lichtenstein-style pop art covers. They aren't appropriate at all.

Here is my favorite Lord of the Flies c..."

Scott can you provide an example of what you mean?

Here's one:

'Salem's Lot

haha yeah they are pretty bad... I read both those editions of 'Salem's Lot and Pet Semetary

Haha, the Pet Sematary one is even worse!

Scott, those King covers are terrible. The covers make light of the stories, which are dark and gruesome. Weird.

Scott, I don't remember that Lord of the Flies cover. It's been so long since I read it. What's up with the insect?

I love this cover of A Clockwork Orange.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/clock...

I guess it's supposed to be symbolic. I just really like the illustration.

Oh, hell, I get it now. Supposed to be the "lord fly" over the boys. I guess that's Piggy in the picture.

Scott wrote: "Haha, the Pet Sematary one is even worse!"

Pet Sematary Um yeah...I have no idea what the story is about from this cover...and I've read the book.

I love the cover for Sacrifice by John Everson. http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/6177...

I like that cover, too, Jason. But the Covenant cover wasn't very inspired.

Tressa wrote: "I like that cover, too, Jason. But the Covenant cover wasn't very inspired. "

This one was. http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/2598...

Why does the other Covenant cover even exist? The second is marvelous.

The new Brian Keene Novel. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/...

One of my faves is the cover to Ramsay Campbell's collection Dark feasts. It shows a scarily enthusiastic woman eating pickled onions from a jar, and there are eyeballs alongside the onions and a great carnivalesque 'Eel Pie House' sign behind her:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/%2525...

Oh - you can add a cover to your post by clicking 'add book/author' and then finding the book and selecting add cover from the bottom of the pop-up box (instead of adding the link).

I agree, those King covers are terrible!

This isn't strictly horror, but I love Leo & Diane Dillon's cover for Deathbird Stories. The one for Strange Wine Fifteen New Stories from the Nightside of the World is also really nice. They've done a lot of fine work over the years.

when i was looking for brian keene's new urban gothic i came across this: Urban Gothic Lacuna and Other Trips. pretty nifty cover. one of the books i'm reading now has a neat cover also: The Dead Parade

Scott, I've always loved those two Ellison covers. Love the red-haired woman on the cover of Strange Wine.

Lindsey, that thing on The Dead Parade looks like that little murderous statue in that Trilogy of Terror movie from the '70s.

I'm partial to Lee's ...the cover is one of the reasons I bought it haha. And again, maybe I'm just partial since it's my favorite book ever, but for some reason I really love the cover...and the cover of is pretty awesome...

And lastly, along with Tressa, I think cover is awesome.

I would have to vote for Fear and Loathing!

Ya know, my last serious band was named after that book.

my personal favorites, off the top of my head anyway.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/2246...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/1106...