Welcome To PARRISH BOOKS!

Email: Parrish@ParrishBooks.com
Telephone: (503)-PARRISH (727-7474)
Fax: (503) 699-7528
Mail: P.O. Box 594, Marylhurst, OR 97036-0594, U.S.A.

Welcome to our on-line bookstore! We have been a full-time dealer in collectible, signed and rare books since 2002. Our mission is to share with you our love of high quality books and to provide a high level of customer service to make your book purchasing and investment enjoyable and productive.

We specialize in helping you find the perfect book for you or a special someone. If you don't know exactly what you are looking for, tell us about the person the book is for and we will help you select a book that you can be sure will impress and please. We will even provide gift-wrapping and gift cards if you wish to make the gift very special.

Can't find the book you want? Let us know and we will do a search for you.

Do you have questions about our services? Please don't hesitate to contact us.

So, customers ask, who are we? Who are the staff? What's your experience? Why this very special bookstore online? Why should I buy my special books from you?

Good question. Let's ask one of the owners:

June Jones is the co-owner and manager of Parrish Books. It was her vision for Parrish Books, a fine collectible online bookstore that would give customers a reliable and safe environment in which to purchase their collectibles that they could enjoy for a lifetime, while the books appreciate, of course. June is a lawyer and spent many years as a dean at Georgetown Law School, her alma mater, a senior education attorney at the Federal Judicial Center training federal judges (!) in the law, and most recently as Associate Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and then Associate Provost at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon (her home state). But it was her life-long dream to start her own business which she began full-time in April 2002. And her life-long interest in the collecting of quality books led her to creating Parrish Books. Her collecting interest began with a First Edition of Charles Dicken's "The Christmas Carol" which she found in the attic of her childhood home that had been given to her father by his in-laws when he married her mother in London in 1946. That led her to many more copies of Dickens' Christmas Books, etc, etc. She was hooked on the collecting of quality books.

Questions for June

What do you enjoy the most about your online bookstore?
Oh, that's a very difficult question. My husband told me when we started that he didn't think I would ever be able to let go of any of my precious books. But he was wrong, I think. What I discovered was that I enjoyed my customers even more than my books -- helping them find the treasure they are seeking, the joy they express when they finally receive it in their hands. And I don't think I realized how enjoyable it would be to fly all over the world to find the treasures we have here at Parrish Books -- to London for Dickens, to Connecticut to pick up our signed Maurice Sendak collection from the man himself, to New York for Bill Clinton's first signings of "My Life," to Pasadena for Ray Bradbury, to San Francisco for Leroy Neiman, to Seattle for Richard Bach and President Jimmy Carter, to Virginia for Tom Clancy, and so many more. But then, there is also the enjoyment of creating the business, the website and all of it's challenges -- choosing our color scheme and our stationery and packing, doing all the pictures and descriptions that take over an hour per book, designing our extensive database with the help of our database consultant, Caroline Sloan. Sorry, not a simple answer I'm afraid, but if you get me started, I will keep you here for hours!

So why should customers purchase their books from you? What is that reliable and safe environment that you think Parrish Books provides?
I think it is very simple. When you purchase from us, you get what you pay for and we will care about you as a customer and that you are satisfied. When we began Parrish Books several years ago, an online bookstore was a novelty, often compared to purchasing sites such as Ebay. What we wanted to do was to establish a fine bookstore online. To us, this was not a contradiction in terms, an impression that had been created by Ebay and fly-by-nighters who used the internet as a tool for deception. We believed that the internet could be a good thing so we began with what we hope is a user-friendly website and stocked it full of extensive pictures, pictures, pictures, and really detailed descriptions. This approach was very labor-intensive but we set out to make our customers feel comfortable in the internet environment.

Signatures on collectible books are a very important issue -- many of the books on Ebay are forgeries -- we know, we have purchased some. But on our website, you see the signature in the pictures to evaluate for yourself. If we have had the book signed directly for us (which many are), we say so and offer a Certificate of Authenticity that is good for life and is fully transferable to another person. And regardless of where the book was signed, we stand behind it 100%. In fact, each book that doesn't come with a COA comes with a description card with the description of the book as it was listed on the website and it comes with our seal affixed to validate the promise. Our seal says "Quality, Service, Integrity" and we mean it.