The name of the book is "A Long December."

It's a crime drama based in rural Nations County, Iowa. One December, just before Christmas, a man is murdered execution style on a back country road. The book follows the lead detective and his fellow officers as they track down the murdered and uncover a terrorist plot.

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For my cover, I want to give the feeling of cold and suspense. It's hard to show, in a pencil sketch, exactly what the covers really will look like. All three of them have gradient from black to white at some point on the cover. My favorite design is the top design. The title is white and beveled with a drop shadow. Because of the bevel and the drop shadow, the white letters don’t get lost, even though some of them are on an almost white background. It really gives the effect I was looking for, almost icy. There are similar effects on the title of the lower design that has blue. I mostly wanted to use black and white, white for December and black to contrast that. I added red in the second design to signify murder and blue in the last design to go with the cold theme. In all of them, I’m using bold headings on the back with key words to describe the book and a synopsis of the book after that, or in the middle.

These are the thumbnails.

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