One recent evening, three lives and company manager Troy Chatterton and book buyer Miriam

Chotner Gardner let me in after hours to this charming bookstore that I first discovered in the 1980s.

I felt privileged all over again and got to ask what makes the store so magical.

It feels to me right now we're here after hours and it feels a little sort of risque and exciting

kind of like from the mixed up files of Mrs. Baselie Frankweiler to be in a bookstore at night and

have it to yourself is like a dream. It's like a dreamy beautiful jewel box of a place. I love

being here. So what do you think it is about small book shops that makes you just want to go inside.

Small spaces. What do you think either of you? I mean I think small spaces especially bookstores,

especially our bookstore which has covered floor to ceiling in books, wooden shelves.

They're cozy, they're inviting, they're welcoming, especially with the right lighting, the right

ceiling, wooden floors. You feel enveloped, you feel taken care of. I remember the first time I

came in here but I don't remember what I bought. Coming in here was you know like coming home.

I was a newly minted novelist. My book was there on the shelf. I ignored it you know just sort of

stayed away from it and you know went to the others but it was such a thrilling feeling to be on

the shelf as well as in person in this beautiful and important place. There's the concept of the

third place which is home work and then third place traditionally was church but people are now

looking for a different kind of third place and bookstores are feeling that role in communities I

think. So we certainly try to be the third place in people's lives. Yeah we definitely are. How about you?

True I think that with a small book shop there's something a little less intimidating about it.

You walk in instead of walking into a bigger book shop where you just kind of get lost. You come

in here and it's the opposite. You immediately feel a little more welcome. You're not overwhelmed by

the sheer amount of books and I think that because it's a smaller space and there's a small staff and

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