The Phinney by Post Book: 100 Books You Might Not Know About That We Think You’ll Love

by Tom Nissley, illustrated by Elinor Nissley

(Phinney Books, paperback, 2026)

A guide to good reading from Phinney Books.

The main business of a small bookstore selling new books is, usually, to focus on new releases. At Phinney Books we try, with enthusiasm, to hold up our end of that bargain but much of our true reading (and recommending) passion is for older books. And so when we launched a monthly book-subscription program, Phinney by Post, soon after we opened our store, we decided to focus on books from the past, ones we love but think our well-read subscribers likely haven’t read. In keeping with the giant signs that rule over the two sides of our bookstore, we alternate between “True” and “Made-up” books, and our goal every month is for our subscribers to say, or at least thinking quietly to themselves, “I never would have picked this book up for myself, but I loved it.”

And every month, we include in each book a card with a short essay to introduce the book by saying why we chose it, as well as anything else it might be helpful or enjoyable to know about the author and the book before (or after) you read it. Once we reached our hundredth Phinney by Post book (we’re now up to 130 and counting), we decided to collect those first hundred essays, both as a record of over eight years of sharing some of our favorite books and as a guide to adventurous reading. If, like us and like so many of our customers, you love finding books that aren’t the same ones stacked up on the New Releases table at every store, we hope our hundred introductions will lead you to your next discoveries, and also make a book that’s a pleasure to read on its own.

Tom Nissley is the owner of Phinney Books in north Seattle. He is the author of A Reader’s Book of Days, has a PhD in American literature from the University of Washington, and was an eight-time champion on Jeopardy!

Elinor Nissley, the author’s sister, is an architect & printmaker in Los Angeles.