Our store hours are from 10 to 7, Monday through Saturday, and 12 to 5 on Sunday.

For those wanting to order for pickup, please email us at info@phinneybooks.com or call at 206-297-2665 to place an order.

You can also order books to be shipped via our page on the Bookshop.org site. To go to our storefront on Bookshop, click here: bookshop.org/shop/phinneybooks. (Please note: Bookshop is not our site, and the inventory listed on their site does not reflect what we have in the store, but we receive 30% of all purchases made through our store on the site.)

Thanks for all of your support for our eight years in business!

******

Welcome to Phinney Books, the neighborhood bookstore in Phinney Ridge/Greenwood in north Seattle.

7405 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98103 206-297-2665 info@phinneybooks.com

Hours: M 10-7 T 10-7 W 10-7 Th 10-7 F 10-7 Sa 10-7 Su 12-5

Our latest book recommendations

To read more, check out back issues of our weekly newsletter, and sign up to receive new ones every week.

Featured

Aug 20, 2023

New Book of the Week (August 14, 2023)

Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hoffman

You could describe Kairos as a Manhattan story—an ill-fated romance between a 50-something man and a teenage girl—or as an allegory for East Germany before, during, and after unification, but neither summary does full justice to this subtle and humane novel. More than anything it is the story of two vivid, individual people caught in time—historical time and their own mismatched, contingent lifetimes—and if their story happens to resonate with the national drama they find themselves part of, as it so brilliantly does, that just adds to its particular, personal depth. It's romantic and a bit austere, it's lovely and brutal, and it's the best novel I've read in quite a while. —Tom

Aug 20, 2023

Old Book of the Week (August 14, 2023)

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965

by Sam Stephenson

There are few moments in the creative history of America as densely potent as the jazz scene in New York City in the late '50s, when you could find Mingus, Monk, Coltrane, Davis, and Evans all gigging—together or separately—on the same night. And there are few windows on that scene as wonderfully illuminating as this one, the distillation of tens of thousands of photos and thousands of hours of tape W. Eugene Smith recorded at his Midtown apartment, an all-night hangout and jam-session spot for musicians and artists and hangers-on for nearly a decade. Stephenson spent almost that long curating those photos and tapes into this beautiful, recently rereleased book, which grounds the highest of art in the dust and debris of everyday life. —Tom

Aug 20, 2023

Old Book of the Week (August 14, 2023)

Phinney by Post Book #104

The Lost Traveler

by Sanora Babb

This is a first: the first time we've chosen an author twice for our Phinney by Post subscription service. Babb's memoir of her childhood on an unfertile Colorado farm, An Owl on Every Post, has been one of our most popular recent selections, and now we're presenting a book about her teen years, when her dreaming and scheming father tried to support the family as a professional gambler in small-town Kansas. It was published earlier, as fiction, and it's a darker story, but it makes a fascinating pair with An Owl as two portraits of a family struggling to survive together and destined to break apart. And together they reveal Babb as a great 20th-century American writer who is just now finally starting to get her due in the 21st century. —Tom

Aug 20, 2023

YA Book of the Week (August 14, 2023)

All Alone with You

by Amelia Diane Coombs

Angsty loner Eloise would much rather be spending her time gaming than logging volunteer hours at LifeCare—an elder care service that's at odds with her social anxiety—but that's what her guidance counselor says she has to do if she wants a scholarship to her dream school. Along with fellow volunteer Austin, Eloise resigns herself to weekly visits keeping an old woman company. It's a prospect made much more nerve-wracking (but all the more intriguing) when Eloise learns the old woman in question, Marianne Landis, is the famous former frontwoman of the Laundromats—and that she can be every bit as prickly as Eloise. At first, Eloise is annoyed by Austin's perpetual cheerfulness but eventually she warms to his sunshine-y persona and the two of them become friends outside their shared LifeCare shifts. It's a sweet, slow-burn friendship-turned-romance, and the Seattle setting is fun, with lots of invented locales mixed in with actual places, especially with the music scene tie-ins. —Anika

Aug 20, 2023

We're a general-interest store selling a carefully chosen selection of new books across a variety of categories. We don't have a whole lot of space, but we make a special effort to have interesting reading in fiction, kids' books, essays, history, cookbooks, music, cities, nature and science, graphic novels, and books about the Northwest. We also sell a selection of paper goods and puzzles, and we'll always have lots of NYRB Classics on hand.

Every week we send a weekly newsletter, featuring book recommendations, new releases, event news, and other stuff, which you can sign up for here.

We opened in June 2014, after taking over Santoro's Books, the neighborhood bookstore for almost a decade. Here are some of the articles about the store, before and after our opening, if you'd like to read more:

"Bookstores in Seattle Soar, and Embrace an Old Nemesis: Amazon.com," ["embrace" might be a little strong...], New York Times, Apr. 11, 2014
"Across the Street from the Future with Tom Nissley," Seattle Weekly, Apr. 29, 2014
"Ballard Author and Jeopardy! Champ Buys Santoro's Books," Phinneywood.com, Apr. 2, 2014
"For the Love of Books: Jeopardy! Champ to Open Seattle Bookstore," MyNorthwest.com, Apr. 28, 2014
"Welcome Seattle's Newest Bookstore, Phinney Books, Tomorrow," Stranger Slog, June 20, 2014
"Independent Bookstore Series: Phinney Books," CityArts, June 25, 2014
"Phinney Books: A New Literary Anchor for Greenwood," Seattle Times, July 6, 2014
"Tom Nissley of Phinney Books Shares What He's Learned from His First Bookstore Christmas Season," Stranger Slog, Dec. 11, 2014

Inquiries about the store (and special order requests) can be sent to info@phinneybooks.com.

Thanks. Hope to see you in the store!

Tom Nissley

Our NINTH-year bestsellers

Our ninth bookstore birthday was June 20, 2023. See our Top 100 bestselling books from our ninth year (and find links there to our bestsellers for each of our previous years).

OUR FAVORITE READING FROM 2022

What books did we most love in 2022 (even if they weren’t written in 2022)? See our year-end top 10 lists from Liz, Tom, Anika, Doree, Kim, Nancy, and Haley.

Our 2nd Store: MADISON BOOKS

Madison Books, our sibling store in the heart of Madison Park (at 4118 E. Madison St.), opened in 2019, and in 2022 was named one of the five national finalists for the Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year! You can contact Madison Books at info@madisonbks.com, sign up for the Madison Books newsletter, and follow the Facebook page for further news, and visit their website. And you can also read a profile of Madison Books in the Seattle Times.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wednesday, October 18, 7:30 pm: The Ridge Readers book club meets (outside the store) to discuss Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves.

Gift Certificates

We do have Phinney Books gift certificates available for purchase, for any amount. They are physical (not electronic) gift certificates, and they can best be ordered in person at the store, over the phone, or via email at info@phinneybooks.com.