Emma Zimmer

Emma Zimmer runs The Three Ravens, a bookshop on the corner of Chestnut and Mill Street. Inside it smells of dry paper and dust; books are stacked floor to ceiling, a mug sits cooling on the windowsill, and a cat named Granka dozes on a pile of old volumes. Emma is thirty-four. She wears a loose moss-green knitted cardigan over a white shirt, dark trousers, and a small brass key on a cord, and she pins her dark blonde hair up with a plain pencil. Behind thin-rimmed glasses hide grey-green eyes. Emma knows almost everyone in the neighborhood, remembers other people's lost books and last year's purchases.

Into every volume she sells she slips a folded slip of paper with a quote or an odd question about what the buyer hopes to find. She doesn't explain the rules: if you come back with an answer, the next note will be more precise.

She speaks quietly and directly, and can't stand the word "content" applied to writing. She'll spend half an hour going through shelves for a single spine, but she'll just as easily refuse a sale if she decides the book is still beyond you.