Usually I don’t own the books I feature for Cover Attraction, but I’m so excited about this book I’m making an exception (and I may do so again in the future). This book was hard for me to get; after fighting gift-card wielding customers at Barnes & Noble, only to find it sold out not only at the store, but at the Barnes & Noble website, I had to get it on eBay. But I’m a fan, dang it, and this was the edition I wanted to read before reading The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Anyway . . .
Marcia at The Printed Page hosts Cover Attraction, a weekly occasion to post an eye-catching cover. Here is mine, The Complete Sherlock Holmes Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics Edition:
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Edition
This slightly fuzzy images shows the back, decorated with the plaque for 221b Baker Street, and other Sherlockian and Victorian objects, including a penny-farthing. The spine is decorated with the Hound of the Baskervilles.
The front and end-papers are decorated with tartan paper, and I fairly swooned when I saw it; it’s masculine and British and very appropriate. The page-edges are gilt and there’s a ribbon bookmark.
The book lacks illustrations and other distractions like spoilery annotations, so it’s perfect for my first read-through of the Sherlock Holmes series.
I am admittedly shallow about book covers and will frequently buy books (or at least give them a serious look) just because of a beautiful cover. Marcia at The Printed Page hosts Cover Attraction, a weekly occasion to post an eye-catching cover. Here is mine:
Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming
Publisher’s Weekly Review:
Flaming’s debut mixes time travel, historical grit and an alternate history of the American frontier in a romance with a fantastic bent. A contemporary antiques dealer, after coming across an old photo, unspools the story of Peter Force, newly arrived in 1900 New York from Idaho, as he joins a crew of laborers toiling in grim conditions to build the subway system. A chance encounter throws Peter into the path of Cheri-Anne Toledo, a troubled woman who claims to have traveled seven years into the future from the Lost Kingdom of Ohio, a small frontier kingdom over which her father reigned. Cheri-Anne’s plight, and his feelings for her, drags them into the orbits of a crusty J.P Morgan and of dueling inventors Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. As Peter and Cheri-Anne evade the powerful forces invested in Cheri-Anne, the moment when their lives and the contemporary narrator’s intersects looms closer and closer, creating palpable suspense. The journey through the seedier side of New York’s Gilded Age, with reprisal killings for labor agitators and nights spent in drunken dance halls, is an arresting contrast to classic time-travel themes. This is a real crowd-pleaser. (Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
I have a weakness for type-centric covers, and this one is especially striking, with a very readable calligraphic typeface, bright on the dark parchment-like background, and good use of ornament to completely frame the text. While the text imparts a medieval flavor, the stopwatch indicates a story with a steampunk feel. The whole cover has impact while letting the reader know what they’re in for.
