To some extent, we all place judgments on a book’s contents based on the cover design. It’s inevitable and expected—if it wasn’t the case, then publishers would just print books with plain bindings with the titles laid out in sans-serif type. (Sometimes they do just that and it’s called minimalist, so go figure.)

Another pleasing aspect of book cover design is that they allow one to painlessly peruse the works of many authors without having to actually, you know, read anything.

To that end, the good folks at Jacket Copy put together a nifty gallery of some of their favorite new book covers. Some of the selections are less than inspired (the cover for Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind seems far too obvious, for one), but at least three or four are nothing short of incredible.