Let’s put it out there: every book is beautiful. However, this post aims to curate books that have extra features that make them even more special. With the year 2021 coming to an end and 2022 looking around the corner, I figured I’d collate a list of beautiful books/special editions that will be released in 2022.
Okay, let’s define what I mean by beautiful books. Books on this list may include features such as the following:
- Sprayed, stencilled, or digitally sprayed edges
- Endpage art
- Foiling on the dust jacket
- Reverse art in dust jacket
- Foiling on hardcover
- Embossing on hardcover
- Signed or digitally signed
I know I’m not being gentle with anyone’s wallets, including my own but I hope you enjoy this list.
Title: Legend
Author: Marie Lu
Genre: Science Fiction, dystopia
Price: £89 + shipping
Available: 11/01/2022
Features: Exclusive covers, stencilled sprayed edges, custom endpapers, signed
Where can I buy this? Fairyloot
Note: Please note that these editions will be available for Fairyloot’s subscribers first and may or may not be available for general sale due to limited numbers.
Title: Shatter Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £74 + shipping
Available: 22/02/2022
Features: Exclusive covers, reversible dust jackets, naked cover design with foil details, digitally sprayed edges, custom endpapers, signed
Where can I buy this? Fairyloot
Note: Please note that these editions will be available for Fairyloot’s subscribers first and may or may not be available for general sale due to limited numbers.
Title: The Book of Sand
Author: Theo Clare
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £24.99
576 Pages
Released: 13/01/2022
Features: Sprayed/stencilled edges, digital signature
Where can I buy this? Goldsboro
Click for Synopsis:
SAND. A hostile world of burning sun.
Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins.
In the distance a group of people – a family – walk towards us.
Ahead lies shelter: a ‘shuck’ the family call home and which they know they must reach before the light fails, as to be out after dark is to invite danger and almost certain death.
To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs.
It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life – except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she’s beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is …
Two very different worlds featuring a group of extraordinary characters driven to the very limit of their endurance in a place where only the strongest will survive.
Title: Ghosts (book 4)
Author: G. X. Todd
Genre: Crime
Price: £24.99
576 Pages
Released: 21/01/2022
Features: Sprayed edges, signed, numbered
Where can I buy this? Goldsboro
Click for Synopsis:
The heart-stopping conclusion to the highly acclaimed Voices series, where there is no place left to hide and nowhere else to run.
Seven years ago, the voices came. Some people could hear and others despised them for it. As death and destruction spread, a ghostly figure was waiting in the shadows. Now the Flitting Man is ready to show his face – and no one is safe.
Pilgrim was made for this broken world. He’s chosen his path and will stop at nothing to see it through.
Lacey grew up in this changing world. She’s lost almost everything to the Flitting Man, but her fight isn’t over yet.
Albus sees this world as others cannot. And the friends that he’s kept safe are facing terrible danger.
Addison belongs to a very different world. She might just be the future, if she survives…
Title: Pandora
Author: Susan Stokes-Chapman
Genre: Historical fiction
Price: £24.99
576 Pages
Released: 21/01/2022
Features: Sprayed edges, signed, numbered
Where can I buy this? Goldsboro
Click for Synopsis:
A pure pleasure of a novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance.
Perfect for readers who loved The Binding and The Essex Serpent.
London, 1799. Dora Blake is an aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents’ famed shop of antiquities. When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle’s suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future. Dora sees it as a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle.
But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it. As Dora uncovers the truth she starts to realise that some mysteries are buried, and some doors are locked, for a reason.
orgeously atmospheric and deliciously page-turning, Pandora is a story of secrets and deception, love and fulfilment, fate and hope.
‘A richly evocative and hugely enjoyable read, bubbling with mysteries, secrets and pleasures’ Joseph O’Connor
Title: The Winner’s Curse Trilogy
Author: Marie Rutkoski
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £75 + shipping
Available: 13/01/2022
Features: Exclusive covers, hidden covers, signed, sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Illumicrate
Note: Please note that these editions will be available for Illumicrate’s subscribers first and may or may not be available for general sale due to limited numbers.
Title: Daughter of the Moon Goddess
Author: Sue Lynn Tan
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 20/01/2022
Features: Signed, sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
A captivating debut fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess.
A young woman’s quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm, setting her on a dangerous path where those she loves are not the only ones at risk…
Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the powerful Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when her magic flares and her existence is discovered, Xingyin is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.
Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to train in the Crown Prince’s service, learning to master archery and magic, despite the passion which flames between her and the emperor’s son.
To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies, across the earth and skies.
But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream -striking a dangerous bargain, where she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting, romantic duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic, of loss and sacrifice – where love vies with honour, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.
Title: The Maid
Author: Nita Prose
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Crime & Mystery
Price: £14.99
352 Pages
Published: 20/01/2022
Features: Stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
I am your maid. I know so much about you. But what do you know about me?
Molly the Maid is all alone in the world. A nobody. She’s used to being invisible in her job at the Regency Grand Hotel, plumping pillows and wiping away the grime, dust and secrets of the guests who pass through. She’s just a maid – why should anyone take notice?
But Molly is thrown into the spotlight when she discovers an infamous guest, Mr Black, very dead in his bed. This isn’t a mess that can be easily cleaned up. And so Molly becomes embroiled in a hunt for the truth, learning who to trust as she navigates the secret underbelly of the Regency Grand Hotel.
Escapist, charming, and introducing a truly original heroine, The Maid is a story about how everyone deserves to be seen, and how the truth isn’t always black and white – it’s often found in the dirtier, grey areas in between…
Title: The Christie Affair
Author: Nina De Gramont
Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime & Mystery
Price: £16.99
368 Pages
Published: 20/01/2022
Features: Signed, sprayed/stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
In 1926, Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. Only I know the truth of her disappearance.
I’m no Hercule Poirot.
I’m her husband’s mistress.
Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends, and growing literary fame.
Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy.
After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband.
Despite their differences, the two women will become the most unlikely of allies. And during the mysterious eleven days that Agatha goes missing, they will unravel a dark secret that only Nan holds the key to…
Title: A Terrible Kindness
Author: Jo Browning Wroe
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 20/01/2022
Features: Signed, exclusive cover colourway, sprayed/stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
-
Tonight nineteen-year-old William Lavery is dressed for success, his first black-tie do. It’s the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies’ Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. He can barely believe his luck. But as the guests sip their drinks and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation.
It is October 1966 and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school: Aberfan. William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job, and will be – although he’s yet to know it – a choice that threatens to sacrifice his own happiness. His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to bury. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because – as William discovers – giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves.
Title: Pandora
Author: Susan Stokes-Chapman
Genre: Historical fiction
Price: £14.99
352 Pages
Published: 27/01/2022
Features: Signed, exclusive endpapers, stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
A pure pleasure of a novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance.
London, 1799. Dora Blake is an aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents’ famed shop of antiquities. When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle’s suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future. Dora sees it as a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle.
But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it. As Dora uncovers the truth she starts to realise that some mysteries are buried, and some doors are locked, for a reason.
Gorgeously atmospheric and deliciously page-turning, Pandora is a story of secrets and deception, love and fulfilment, fate and hope.
Title: Breathless
Author: Amy McCulloch
Genre: Crime & mystery
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 17/02/2022
Features: Stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
When struggling journalist Cecily Wong is invited to join an expedition to climb one of the world’s tallest mountains, it seems like the chance of a lifetime.
She doesn’t realise how deadly the climb will be.
As their small team starts to climb, things start to go wrong. There’s a theft. Then an accident. Then a mysterious note, pinned to her tent: there’s a murderer on the mountain.
The higher they get, the more dangerous the climb becomes, and the more they need to trust one another.
And that’s when Cecily finds the first body . . .
Title: The Embroidered Book
Author: Kate Heartfield
Genre: Historical fiction, Fantasy
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 17/02/2022
Features: Stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
A sweeping historical epic with a thread of magic, perfect for readers of THE FAMILIARS, THE BINDING, and THE MINIATURIST.
‘Power is not something you are given. Power is something you take. When you are a woman, it is a little more difficult, that’s all’
1768. Charlotte arrives in Naples to marry a man she has never met. Two years later, her sister Antoine is sent to France to marry another stranger. In the mirrored corridors of Versailles, they rename her Marie Antoinette.
But the sisters are not powerless. When they were only children, Charlotte and Antoine discovered a book of spells – spells that seem to work, with dark and unpredictable consequences.
In a world of vicious court politics, of discovery and dizzying change, Charlotte and Antoine use their secret skills to redefine their lives, becoming the most influential women of the age.
But every spell requires a sacrifice. As love between the sisters turns to rivalry, they will send Europe spiralling into revolution.
Brimming with romance, betrayal, and the hidden power of women, THE EMBROIDERED BOOK reveals and reimagines a dazzling period of history as you have never seen it before.
Title: Gallant
Author: V.E. Schwab
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Price: £17.99
448 Pages
Published: 01/03/2022
Features: Stencilled edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Olivia Prior is missing three things: a mother, a father, and a voice. Her mother vanished all at once, and her father by degrees, and her voice was a thing she never had to start with. She grew up at Merilance School for Girls. Now, nearing the end of her time there, Olivia receives a letter from an uncle she’s never met, her father’s older brother, summoning her to his estate, a place called Gallant.
But when she arrives, she discovers that the letter she received was several years old. Her uncle is dead. The estate is empty, save for the servants. Olivia is permitted to remain, but must follow two rules: don’t go out after dusk, and always stay on the right side of a wall that runs along the estate’s western edge. Beyond it is another realm, ancient and magical, which calls to Olivia through her blood…
Title: The Atlas Six
Author: Olivie Blake
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £16.99
384 Pages
Published: 03/03/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is the runaway TikTok must-read fantasy novel of the year. If you loved Ninth House and A Deadly Education, you’ll love this.
The world’s best young magicians accept the opportunity of a lifetime.
Six are chosen. Only five will walk away.
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few…
– Libby Rhodes and Nicolas Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
– Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
– Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
– Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
– Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
Title: Run Rose Run
Author: Dolly Parton and James Paterson
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £20.00
400 Pages
Published: 07/03/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
From America’s most beloved superstar and its greatest storyteller – a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise and on the run, and determined to do whatever it takes to survive.
Every song tells a story.
She’s a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her.
She’s also on the run. Find a future, lose a past.
Nashville is where she’s come to claim her destiny. It’s also where the darkness she’s fled might find her. And destroy her.
Run, Rose, Run is a novel glittering with danger and desire – a story that only America’s #1 beloved entertainer and its #1 bestselling author could have created.
Title: Wild and Wicked Things
Author: Francesca May
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £12.99
432 Pages
Published: 31/03/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
In the aftermath of the First World War, a young woman gets swept into a glittering world filled with illicit magic, romance, blood debts and murder in this lush and decadent debut novel.
On Crow Island, people whispered, real magic lurked just below the surface. But Annie Mason never expected her enigmatic new neighbour to be a witch.
When she witnesses a confrontation between her best friend Bea and the infamous Emmeline Delacroix at one of Emmeline’s extravagantly illicit parties, Annie is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where magic can buy what money cannot; a world where the consequence of a forbidden blood bargain might be death.
Title: Yinka, where is your husband?
Author: Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Genre: Contemporary romance
Price: £14.99
352 Pages
Published: 31/03/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
The hotly anticipated debut of 2022 with a heroine to fall in love with.
The Nigerian accent Dictionary
Huzband (pronounced auz-band) noun
1. A male partner in a marriage
E.g. Yinka’s younger sister, Kemi, is married to Uche
2. A non-existent man in a non-existent marriage whose whereabouts is often questioned, usually by Nigerian mums and aunties to single British Nigerian women
E.g. So, Yinka. Tell me. Where is your huzband? Ah, ah. You’re thirty-one now!
Yinka wants to find love. The problem is she also has a mum who thinks she’s better qualified to find it for her.
She also has too many aunties who frequently pray for her delivery from singledom, a preference for chicken and chips over traditional Nigerian food, and a bum she’s sure is far too small as a result. Oh, and the fact that she’s a thirty-one-year-old South-Londoner who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage is a bit of an obstacle too…
When her cousin gets engaged, Yinka commences Operation Find A Date for Rachel’s Wedding. Will Yinka find herself a huzband? And what if the thing she really needs is to find herself?
Title: Lessons in Chemistry
Author: Bonnie Garmus
Genre: Contemporary fiction; feminism
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 05/04/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
‘Your ability to change everything – including yourself – starts here’ – Elizabeth Zott
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.
But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with – of all things – her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (‘combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride’) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Meet the unconventional, uncompromising Elizabeth Zott.
Title: With This Kiss
Author: Carrie Hope Fletcher
Genre: Contemporary romance
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 14/04/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
With This Kiss is the brand-new magical love story from the Number One Sunday Times bestselling author, coming soon.
When their lips touch, will she seal his fate?
From the outside, Lorelai is an ordinary young woman with a normal life. She loves reading, she works at the local cinema and she adores living with her best friend. But she carries a painful burden, something she’s kept hidden for years; whenever she kisses someone on the lips, she sees how they are going to die. But she’s never known if she’s seeing what was always meant to be, or if her kiss is the thing that decides their destiny. And so, she hasn’t kissed anyone since she was sixteen.
Then she meets Grayson. Sweet, clever, funny Grayson. And for the first time in years she yearns for a man’s kiss. But she can’t… or can she? And if she does, should she try to intervene and change what she sees?
Spellbinding, magical and utterly original, With This Kiss is one love story you will never forget.
Title: A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting
Author: Sophie Irwin
Genre: Historical romance
Price: £14.99
400 Pages
Published: 05/04/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
The season is about to begin – and there’s not a minute to lose.
Kitty Talbot needs a fortune. Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. This is 1818 after all, and only men have the privilege of seeking their own riches.
With only twelve weeks until the bailiffs call, launching herself into London society is the only avenue open to her, and Kitty must use every ounce of cunning and ingenuity she possesses to climb the ranks.
The only one to see through her plans is the worldly Lord Radcliffe and he is determined to thwart her at any cost, especially when it comes to his own brother falling for her charms.
Can Kitty secure a fortune and save her sisters from poverty? There is not a day to lose and no one – not even a lord – will stand in her way…
Title: Do No Harm
Author: Jack Jordan
Genre: Contemporary fiction; feminism
Price: £12.99
432 Pages
Published: 26/05/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
My child has been taken. And I’ve been given a choice…
Kill a patient on the operating table. Or never see my son again.
The man lies on the table in front of me.
As a surgeon, it’s my job to save him.
As a mother, I know I must kill him.
You might think that I’m a monster.
But there really is only one choice.
I must get away with murder.
Or I will never see my son again.
I’VE SAVED MANY LIVES.
WOULD YOU TRUST ME WITH YOURS?
Title: Blade Breaker
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Genre: Fantasy
Price: £16.99
576 Pages
Published: 28/06/2022
Features: Sprayed edges
Where can I buy this? Waterstones
Click for Synopsis:
The fate of the world rests on a blade’s edge.
Fighting beside her band of unlikely companions, Corayne is learning to embrace her ancient lineage and wield her father’s powerful sword. But while she successfully closed one of the Spindles, her journey is far from over.
Queen Erida’s army marches across Allward with her consort, Taristan, right beside them, opening more portals into nightmarish worlds, razing kingdoms to the ground.
Corayne has no choice but to assemble an army of her own if she’s to save the realm as she knows it. But perilous lands await her and the companions, and they face assassins, otherworldly beasts, and tempestuous seas all as they rally a divided Ward to fight behind them.
But Taristan has unleashed an evil far more wicked than his corpse armies. Something deadly waits in the shadows; something that might consume the world before there’s any hope for victory.
Have any special editions to suggest? Let me know down below!
Do you know any other special editions releasing in 2022 I missed?
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