Bone Horn is a queer, bookish, funny, detective novel by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain, about a newly registered private investigator’s hunt for Alice B. Toklas’ elusive horn. The novel was a fun and quirky read with lots of historical references to modernist icons.

The cover memo had bold, retro, mystery novels as cover comps and so I leaned into the retro look for many of the cover options that I worked on.

I also wanted to design some options with images of Alice, however using a photograph for the cover design didn’t seem quite right for this novel so I painted a gouache illustration of Alice to use for some cover options.

It is always a nice surprise when the final cover is chosen from the first round of designs without any revisions. This book was so fun to read and design the cover for. Bone Horn by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain will be published in the US on June 30th this year by Soft Skull Press.