Shelf Candy Saturday #5: Winter's Shadow

This wonderful book meme/blog hop

is hosted by

Stephanie @

Five Alarm Book Reviews!!

The purpose of this feature is to display

a beautiful book cover,

with information, if available,

about the cover illustrator,

photographer, and/or designer.

For all the participation rules,

just click

HERE.

This week, I'm showing

some cover love to:

Winter's Shadow

M.J. Hearle

Paperback, 432 pages

Pan McMillan Australia

June 1, 2011

You can check out my review

HERE.

When I discovered this book, with its unforgettable cover, it was literary love at first sight!  I just had to make it part of my collection!  The disappointing fact that it had been published in Australia, and wasn't available in the States, didn't deter me.  I just kept looking on the Internet...  Well, it took a few months of on-and-off searching, but I finally found the book, ordered it, and got it into my eager little hands!  I wasted no time laminating it, too!

Incredibly, the cover is a photograph.  The color suffusing the forest in the background has been manipulated, of course.  It's this beautiful, eerie, electric blue, with just a little bit of green.  It not only gives an otherworldly look to the cover, but also frames the couple in the center very nicely.

The red hair is almost a bright orange, and immediately rivets the viewer's attention on the embracing couple.  Although their faces aren't visible, one can feel the emotions just from their pose -- they're very much in love with each other, but there's despair and desperate longing in their embrace, hinting that something or someone is threatening their relationship.  The girl is probably crying, and the boy is attempting to console her, while he himself has no hope left.  It's just perfectly done!  In one glance, the reader is getting a preview of the emotional intensity of this story.

The bottom of the cover is black, which is also a hint that darkness is somehow threatening to swallow them.  The title stands out in very stark, classic lettering against this background.  The stylized leaves on the sides of the cover are the same color as the lettering, and also frame it, giving the cover a very aesthetic look.

This is indeed an incredibly well-designed cover!  The image itself is a stock photo, from Getty Images/Stockphotos.  The designer is Lisa White, about whom I was unable to get any information, except that she won the 2011 Best Designed Fiction Book Award from the Australian Publishers Association, for a book titled Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey.  This book is mentioned on the Bookseller + Publisher blog, Fancy Goods.   Just scroll down the page until you find it.  

Here is the online bookseller where I was finally able to purchase this novel, at the lowest price I've seen yet, with free worldwide shipping:  fishpond.com.sg