Tattoos+Books?

Our fantastic buyers have brought in a great new collection of cool contemporary novels with redesigned covers by famous tattoo artists. While body art and literature is not a traditional creative pairing, this collection is fun, hip, and a refreshing alternative to many bland book covers. Here are the offerings:

Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding. Cover art by Tara McPherson, a poster artist who has created numerous works for such acts as Beck, Modest Mouse, and the Melvins. Her art was also featured in the Academy Award-winning film Juno.

Helen Fielding's devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud account of a year in the life of a thirty-something Singleton launched a genre and transcended the pages of fiction to become a cultural icon.







The Bone People by Keri Hulme. Cover art by Pepa Heller, a professional tattoo artist since 1996. The owner of Bohemian Tattoo Arts in Tauranga, New Zealand, he draws inspiration from Maori and Pacific styles.

At once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People is a powerful and unsettling tale saturated with violence and Maori spirituality.






From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming. Cover art by Chris Garver, who is widely considered to be among the world's best tattoo artists. Featured on TLC's highly-rated series Miami Ink, his work has brought him to Asia, North and South America, and Europe.

A game of cross and double-cross ensues-with the British Secret Service's most infamous operative both the stakes and the prize-in this classic Bond novel of counterespionage.







Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. Cover art by Chris Conn, who was born in Hollywood, California in 1970 and was a celebrated tattoo artist for sixteen years. He is now a successful illustrator and painter based out of San Francisco.

A modern classic, this early novel by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee centers on the crisis of conscience and morality of the Magistrate-a loyal servant of the Empire working in a tiny frontier town, doing his best to ignore an inevitable war with the "barbarians."






Money by Martin Amis. Cover art by Bert Krak, a master of classic American tattooing, who got his start at Rock-A-Billy Tattoo in Lauderhill, Florida, and now works at Top Shelf Tattooing in Queens, New York.

Hailed as "a sprawling, fierce, vulgar display" (The New Republic) and "exhilarating, skillful, savvy" (The Times Literary Supplement) when it made its first appearance in the mid- 1980s, Money is Martin Amis's hilarious portrait of one man's relentless pursuit of pleasure.








Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. Cover art by Duke Riley, the owner of East River Tattoo in Brooklyn. Acclaimed for his unique interpretations of the urban landscape, he has participated in numerous art exhibitions around the world.

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore's great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho- babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.