Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

http://www.christinefeehan.com/dark_prince/elprincipeoscuro.jpg (Feehan’s Dark Prince in Spanish - not sure if this is Spain Spanish, or available in the US Spanish) - I know vampires are the undead, but this is a too little dead-and-decomposing for me. Also, isn’t the heroine of this book meant to have dark hair? And isn’t the story set a lot more recently than the costumes would lead one to believe?

Helen, running away before someone starts having a go about Feehan’s Dark Heroes being Carpathians, not Vampires.

Men at Work is pretty amazing in its badness: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780425206836&itm=2

Rowena Cherry’s Insufficient Mating Material is also great.  Check out the insane copy: http://thebestreviews.com/book17379

If the Men at Work link doesn’t work, try this one.

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780425206836,00.html

Okay so not strictly romance but too good to pass up.  This is the chechoslovakian cover of Rachel Caine’s Ill Wind. 

http://www.rachelcaine.com/images/ILLWINDCZ.jpg

The author posted it on her blog a while back for all to see.  Keep in mind that there is nothing even remotely tentacled in this book.

You know, that’s a very cool looking cover. Too bad it doesn’t match the story!

I am compelled to offer up one of my own foreign covers for your amusement (it certainly made me laugh out loud when I opened the box of books).  Check out the French cover for my Avon book, HER SCANDALOUS AFFAIR ( Regency historical): http://www.amazon.fr/Coeur-rubis-Candice-Hern/dp/2290349585

I ask you ... in what era did they wear such a hat?  :-)

I’m with Ana, I’d definately pick up a book with that storm/witch woman/tentacle cover…

...and then I’d be absolutely hoping mad when it turned out there was nary a tentacle to be found inside, so I guess it’s a good job I don’t speak Czech :)

I just found out that LADY X’S COWBOY is going to be printed in France by J’AI LU.  Curious about the company, I went to their website and am now alternating between stomach-clenching terror and hysterical glee to see what cover they slap on that bad boy.

A sampling:
http://www.jailu.com/results.php?STEPTYPE_TITRE=&STEPTYPE_AUTEUR=&mois=&collections=4383560100+0091772300&st=tout&trackcoll=Aventures et passions&col=sent

Ah, crap...or should I say, merde...let’s try this again:

http://www.jailu.com/home_sent.php?col=sent

Then click on Aventures et passions.

Mais oui, Zoe! I totally agree with you! J’Ai Lu have the worst covers ever!

Here’s another one. It’s the French edition of Emma Holly’s Beyond Seduction

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v27/blue_angel/BeyondSeduction-EmmaHolly.jpg

Susan Elizabeth Phillips had a really weird cover for a foreign version of It Had To Be You. I don’t remember the details exactly but the cover had a woman’s legs and lots vines....very strange. I think it was published in some eastern european country......

I was at a big bookfair last night, and I saw some horrible, horrible covers! Too bad my budget didn’t allow me to buy books I wasn’t interested in, and my time-budget didn’t allow me to write down titles and authors to Google them…

Here is a Phillips one with feet.  This site seems devoted to all of her non-sequitor German reprints.  Although I prefer most of those to the American reprint of It Had to be You that features BOOBS.  Subtle?  Non, chere.  Oops - Nein, liebster.

Sorry - I meant these boobs.

Here‘s the German cover for Emma Holly’s Beyond Seduction.  Check out the colors! 

Or another German cover, this one for Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale.

Hah.  Another appropriate spam foiler:  europe37.

Can anyone find a link to Jenny Crusie’s ‘Welcome To Temptation’ French release?  I did check Amazon.fr but it wasn’t there. She showed the cover in the ‘When bad covers happen to good books’ workshop at last year’s RWA.  It was gorgeous, in black and white but with a woman in a red prom dress climbing out of a dumpster.

Unfortunately, as she pointed out, the heroine spends the entire book in khaki shorts and there’s nothing so ugly as a dumpster in the whole of Temptation.

Tentacles, again.

Oh, and conversely: Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Unleash the Night had a gorgeous UK cover, but the guy on the US one scared the crap out of me.  He looked like Edward Scissorhands’ greebo cousin.