Cover design: by Harini Nagendra

This week's topic is Blogger's Choice - pick what you want! And that's always the hardest, isn't it - at least for me. Choice always makes it difficult - especially when there are no boundaries set! So of course, with a day full of things to do, I spent too much time procrastinating, thinking of various topics I could write about, and then moving to the next shiny thing.

Until I thought of - covers! More precisely, book covers. I've always been fascinated by cover art - there's art, science and alchemy involved. What is it that makes a book call out to a reader? Often it's the cover that signals, in some mysterious but usually accurate way, what it contains within. These days, with e-books, audio books, and online browsing, the art of choosing the exact keywords to advertise is becoming more critical - but for me, nothing can replace the satisfaction of scanning through a pile of books at a bookstore or library, and looking at the covers, until something tugs at my attention.

Since my latest book, A Nest of Vipers, released earlier this month - I thought this would be a good time to show you the two gorgeous covers I have 

For the US version, from Pegasus Books - I love the frisson of fear this generates - a young woman, in a sari, her hair beautifully decorated with flowers, walks into a building with a series of arches. Alongside her, vipers slither at the edges, just out of sight. Edward, Prince of Wales, is visiting Bangalore in 1922, and his visit is marked by pro-independence protests, often violent ones. While investigating the mysterious disappearance of a master magician from a locked cage, mid-show, Kaveri finds herself in murkier waters than she intended - what does the magician's disappearance have to do with the Prince's upcoming visit, and the young man found dead just after the magic show? It's A Nest of Vipers alright, and the book cover portrays the mood perfectly.

And then, here's the UK/India version, from Little Brown/Constable/Hachette 

An equally stunning cover, with its gilt embossing, but such a different mood! I love the richness of colours and textures on this one - with the flowers at the edges, Kaveri's gorgeous sari, and the nod to the magician's oeuvre with the snake charmer's basket (so redolent of 1920s India) and the circus tent in the background. 

I may be (definitely am!) biased, but I love both these covers. I know I would never be able to come up with stuff like this, and am in awe of cover designers and artists everywhere. May their tribe continue to flourish!