When I stopped at the library yesterday to return her first book, Still Life, the librarian asked me how I liked it. When I waxed enthusiastic, she said that the library had all six of this author's novels. So two more came home with me. This cover is of the second, A Fatal Grace.
Now I'd read this book anywhere—waiting for a play to start, at town meeting, in a restaurant if I was eating alone, on the Amtrak to NYC. Why? Because the cover is wonderful and, I think, would intrigue other readers.
Not so with this second cover, the one below. The name of the book is Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn. It's the first (and last) novel I've ever tried by this author. The ONLY reason I brought it home with its Danielle Steele-ish cover (insert the image of a gagging reflex here) is that the reviews I'd read said this author wrote historical novels, which is generally a genre that I like.
I was willing to ignore the cover issue because of something that happened when I worked for The Countryman Press. We published mystery novels and picked up a good one by an author from Minnesota. Part of the story involved a video of a political candidate making love to someone she shouldn't have been. The cover designer seized on this part of the book and came up with a pink cover featuring a video camera and a disheveled bed. The author wasn't too keen on it but Countryman went ahead.
I now imagine myself not wanting to read that book in public either—because of its cover.
Anyway, I'm here to tell ya that Deanna Raybourn's efforts live up—or down, depending on your point of view—to her book's cover. I pushed on to page 141 hoping it would get better before flipping to the back to see if the ending justified reading any further. It didn't. So now it's back to my new favorite, Louise Penny.
This is one time that judging a book by its cover was justified.
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