Seward Park

Third Place Books Seward Park is open for limited, in-store browsing and curbside pickup daily from 9am to 6pm. For the health and safety of our staff and community, customers are required to follow our Code of Conduct while on the premises.

While our in-store event programming is paused, we're hosting an array of virtual programming with your favorite (and soon to be favorite) authors! You can check our event calendar here. Our book clubs are also meeting virtually on Zoom.

Raconteur (our on-site restaurant, bar, and cafe) are closed. We'll be bringing in a new restaurant partner as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience.

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Third Place Seward Park is a general-interest bookstore featuring new and used books with a used-book buying counter open seven days a week. We opened our doors in May of 2016 in the Seward Park neighborhood of south Seattle. Our Seward Park location continues the Third Place mission of providing a gathering space for its community by hosting over 200 events a year, including:

  • nationally-touring authors, such as James McBride, Marc Maron, Phoebe Robinson, and Timothy Snyder
  • local authors, such as Anastacia Renee, Shaun David Hutchinson, and John Medina
  • a monthly reading by The African-American Writers' Alliance (second Monday of every month at 7pm)
  • a monthly Story Time for Grown Ups (third Sunday of every month at 7pm)

. We also host nine monthly book clubs:

Throughout the year, Third Place Books Seward Park hosts Give Back Fundraisers that have raised thousands of dollars for our local schools and community organizations. For information and to schedule a Give Back Fundraiser, see our informational page.

Latest Staff Picks

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I'll Give You the Sun Cover Image

I'll Give You the Sun (Paperback)

By Jandy Nelson
$10.99

I'll Give You The Sun is the story of twins told before and after their lives are rent by tragedy. Nelson writes with magical exuberance that portrays and demonstrates how creativity can change our perception of the world. This is a book of twists and complicated relationships, asking how we can do better by our loved ones.

Picked by Elijah
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Dept. of Speculation (Vintage Contemporaries) Cover Image

Dept. of Speculation (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

By Jenny Offill
$15.95

This wry and experimental book tells the story of an ailing marriage in a series of short, tangential dispatches--at some times a journal, others a commonplace book. Offill uses blank space expertly to foster connections between paragraphs and characters. Few other books are so memorable, or feel so much like memory.

Picked by Elijah
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Tartine Bread (Artisan Bread Cookbook, Best Bread Recipes, Sourdough Book) Cover Image

Tartine Bread (Artisan Bread Cookbook, Best Bread Recipes, Sourdough Book) (Hardcover)

By Chad Robertson
$40.00

I have been making false starts into the world of naturally leaven breads for five years now. Of an entire shelf of baking books, only Tartine Bread turned homemade sourdough into a comprehensible and enjoyable process. I am now drowning in the heady, yeasty aroma of homemade bread, afloat in loaves to my neck. A kitchen must-have.

Picked by Elijah
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The Cassandra: A Novel Cover Image

The Cassandra: A Novel (Paperback)

By Sharma Shields
$16.00

In this eponymous retelling, Spokane author Sharma Shields merges myth with the modern catastrophes of nuclear proliferation and environmental devastation. Don't come here for hope. Shields's writing is graphic and prescient, demanding that we listen to women--before it is too late.

Picked by Elijah
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Cover Image

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (Paperback)

By Lindsey Fitzharris
$16.00

In the spirit of upcoming turkey carcasses, here is the most decadently pus-soaked and maggot-riddled book I've ever had the privilege of reading. Surgery, belying its present, was once a barbaric exercise in brute strength and swift scalpelwork. Only thanks to the iconoclastic work of doctors like Joseph Lister and William T.G. Morton are procedures possible without unbearable agony and rapid infection. This medical history is brisk, riveting, nauseating, and unrelentingly fun.

Picked by Elijah
Bluets Cover Image

Bluets (Paperback)

By Maggie Nelson
$16.00

It's unclear if this book is prose or poetry (or that hateful nonanswer "prose-poetry"). Certainly, though, Nelson has crafted a crucial treatise on love and loneliness that interrogates the many natures of such emotions. I can only say that this book doesn't answer any questions, and that I will keep rereading it to revisit those that it raises.

Picked by Elijah
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Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion Cover Image

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (Paperback)

By Jia Tolentino
$18.00

Jia Tolentino, of The New Yorker aplomb, in this collection demonstrates that, for a cultural critic, no norm is beneath observation. Tolentino writes like a contemporary anthropologist: rummaging through our artifacts and explaining them to us, wondering aloud how they became so misshapen. Written for every reader, your life will only be improved, and changed, by picking up a copy.

Picked by Elijah
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The Art of Fielding: A Novel Cover Image

The Art of Fielding: A Novel (Paperback)

By Chad Harbach
$16.99

Miss college? Love baseball? Lust after your school president? I don't either, so the depth to which I reveled in this book surprised me. Harbach's swooping sports odyssey is sentence-level funny in a way that tempers its growing bleakness, with characters who are troubled and human and who tangle into ornate, fragile knots. Is this book an allegory? Sure, but who knows for what. Life, probably.

Picked by Elijah
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The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays Cover Image

The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays (Paperback)

By Elisa Gabbert
$16.00

Featured in this collection is an essay from 2018 that, in passing, mentions the increasing likelihood of a pandemic and the return of fascism. Which is to say, Gabbert writes with an eerie prescience suggesting that, if one reads enough, and from disparate enough sources, they can predict the future. Of course, this is a big ask for most people--so I recommend they read this book instead.

Picked by Elijah
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