Sisterly Rivalry: All the News That's Fit to Survive

{ illustrated by Pierre Mornet }

For Valentine's, I gave my secret crush Simone a copy of a book I recently designed, The Taxonomy of Barnacles. It's a novel about a father of a wealthy, eccentric family of six daughters but no sons. He challenges the sisters on who will best be able to carry on the Barnacle name and inherit it all. Survival of the fittest sibling. It's a cross between social Darwinism and The Royal Tenenbaums with Balthus and Victorian science journals thrown in. It's one of my favorite recent covers. The author was so lovely to work with. After several rounds of designs which didn't make it to the next evolutionary step, she was ecstatic to see the final painting of the Barnacles sisters. She sent me a beautiful bouquet from Magnolia Flowers. So nice to get some love from an author instead of "It looks perfect, but can you please make my name larger, change it to red and use my mother's drawings." She gave an interview in this Sunday's New York Times Style section that shows that fiction may not be too far from the truth.