Robbing the Cradle

I was perusing the library's Instagram account this morning, and obviously we follow many other libraries and bookstores and authors, and someone posted a picture of the recent James Patterson book Cradle and All.

I couldn't help but think of a few other horror books covers I've seen recently:

I know I've posted before about the trends that arise in book cover design, especially because many of them are created now by using stock photos and then altering them, but it's always fun to juxtapose a few examples that use a similar design or theme.

The Replacement and Cradle and All both had these covers in hardcover, but The Ghost of Lily Painter had a different cover in it's hardback edition, and did not receive this new treatment until the paperback was released. The hardcover looked like this:

I'm not saying that this publisher copied anyone else, in fact The Ghost of Lily Painter had its paperback release in 2012, and the other two books were published afterwards. I'm merely pointing out the the similarities in the design.