Storytimes near ALABASTER - ALBERT L. SCOTT LIBRARY

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Medicare information specialist Monique Hahn will help you navigate through the process of Medicare. Learn about filing, benefits, and any other questions you might have.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Join us to discuss The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult. After surviving a plane crash, Dawn Edelstein is forced to confront the life she chose versus the one she left behind. Torn between returning home to her family and career as a death doula or reconnecting in Egypt with a former lover and an abandoned dream, Dawn’s story unfolds along two parallel paths, exploring fate, choice, love, and what it means to live a fulfilled life.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Discover the magic of stumpery gardening! Join us as Louise Billings of the Birmingham Fern Society offers an inspiring look at “Living Roots,” the first stumpery garden in the Southeastern United States, created by the B.F.S. in October 2024. A stumpery garden transforms tree trunks, roots, and stumps into a stunning natural landscape filled with lush ferns and their companion plants. Through photos, stories, and practical advice, you'll follow the creation of this unique garden from concept to completion and learn some tips on how you can build your own stumpery at home. Whether you have a single stump or an entire collection of fallen wood, a stumpery can add beauty, habitat, and year-round interest to your landscape. Come explore this fascinating gardening trend and discover how the possibilities are truly endless!

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Siluria Brewing Company

Join us at Siluria Brewing Company for a talk about Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood by Rose George. From Amazon: An eye-opening exploration of blood, the life giving substance with the power of taboo, the value of diamonds and the promise of breakthrough science. Blood carries life, yet the sight of it makes people faint. It is a waste product and a commodity pricier than oil. It can save lives and transmit deadly infections. Each one of us has roughly nine pints of it, yet many don’t even know their own blood type. And for all its ubiquitousness, the few tablespoons of blood discharged by 800 million women are still regarded as taboo: menstruation is perhaps the single most demonized biological event. Rose George, author of The Big Necessity, is renowned for her intrepid work on topics that are invisible but vitally important. In Nine Pints, she takes us from ancient practices of bloodletting to the breakthrough of the "liquid biopsy," which promises to diagnose cancer and other diseases with a simple blood test. She introduces Janet Vaughan, who set up the world’s first system of mass blood donation during the Blitz, and Arunachalam Muruganantham, known as “Menstrual Man” for his work on sanitary pads for developing countries. She probes the lucrative business of plasma transfusions, in which the US is known as the “OPEC of plasma.” And she looks to the future, as researchers seek to bring synthetic blood to a hospital near you. Spanning science and politics, stories and global epidemics, Nine Pints reveals our life's blood in an entirely new light. Nine Pints was named one of Bill Gates' recommended summer reading titles for 2019.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Members share crochet and knitting talents as well as work on community service projects. This year our group will provide hats and scarves to local charities and will provide shawls to local nursing home residents. Need to brush up on your skills? Want to share your talents with other crafters? Join us for a fun-packed evening of stitching and conversation. For more information, email us at yayayarners@gmail.com.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

The Shelby County Camera Club now meets at the Albert L. Scott Library on the first Thursday of each month. The club welcomes those with all levels of photography experience and interest.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Medicare information specialist Monique Hahn will help you navigate through the process of Medicare. Learn about filing, benefits, and any other questions you might have.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

This class is designed for beginners. Introduces students to starting the computer, navigating the desktop and file management.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Members share crochet and knitting talents as well as work on community service projects. This year our group will provide hats and scarves to local charities and will provide shawls to local nursing home residents. Need to brush up on your skills? Want to share your talents with other crafters? Join us for a fun-packed evening of stitching and conversation. For more information, email us at yayayarners@gmail.com.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Join us to discuss The Lost Masterpiece by B. A. Shapiro. This novel intertwines the overlooked life of Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot with that of her modern descendant, Tamara Rubin, who inherits a Manet painting tied to dark family secrets. As Tamara uncovers the artwork’s turbulent history—from Nazi theft to mysterious survival—and confronts its unsettling influence, the story explores art, injustice, betrayal, and the lingering power of suppressed voices across generations.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Canva allows those with no graphic design experience to create stunning flyers, graphics, promotional materials, and so much more! This class will introduce you to the open source graphic design platform and we will explore the free addition as well as the professional addition.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Medicare information specialist Monique Hahn will help you navigate through the process of Medicare. Learn about filing, benefits, and any other questions you might have.

Siluria Brewing Company

Before you do that at-home DNA test kit, join us for a discussion of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland. From Amazon: “Before You Spit in That Vial, Read This Book.” ―New York Times “A fascinating account of lives dramatically affected by genetic sleuthing.” ―Wall Street Journal “Wrestles with some of the biggest questions in life: Who are we? What is family? Are we defined by nature, nurture or both?” ―Washington Post You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send your DNA test away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” Welcome to the age of home genetic testing. The Lost Family delves into the many lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests—a technology that represents the end of family secrets. So much can come out when you use biology to find out “the truth”: Adoptees who’ve used the tests to find their birth parents Donor-conceived adults who suddenly discover they have more than 50 siblings Hundreds of thousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren’t biologically related to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a “non-paternity event” Individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptions of race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories are discovered In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than 30 million people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to that question is more important than ever. Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

The Shelby County Camera Club now meets at the Albert L. Scott Library on the first Thursday of each month. The club welcomes those with all levels of photography experience and interest.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Join Richard Cybulsky as he shares how to create a butterfly haven in your backyard and shares winter garden techniques to prepare your yard for spring. Richard is a Jefferson County Master Gardener, Alabama Advanced Master Gardener, and an Alabama Master Naturalist.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Medicare information specialist Monique Hahn will help you navigate through the process of Medicare. Learn about filing, benefits, and any other questions you might have.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Join us to discuss We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes. Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is--complicated. So when her real dad--a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago--suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you about love, and what it actually means to be family.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library

Members share crochet and knitting talents as well as work on community service projects. This year our group will provide hats and scarves to local charities and will provide shawls to local nursing home residents. Need to brush up on your skills? Want to share your talents with other crafters? Join us for a fun-packed evening of stitching and conversation. For more information, email us at yayayarners@gmail.com.

Siluria Brewing Company

Meet us at Siluria Brewing Company to discuss Untethered, a novel based in Troy, AL, by Angela Jackson-Brown. From Amazon: Sometimes family is found in the most unlikely of places . . . In the small college town of Troy, Alabama, amidst the backdrop of 1967, Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia's romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she's chosen. The weight of her family's history bears down on her; a twin brother is missing in action in the heart of the Vietnam War. Having lost her father to cancer, Katia took up the mantle of caretaker, ensuring her mother and brothers were looked after. Her sense of duty extends to the boys at the group home, creating a web of obligations that stretches her emotional bandwidth thin. Amidst a power struggle at work with the board, Katia finds solace in the pages of romance novels and the soothing melodies of Nina Simone. When Seth Taylor, a familiar face from her high school days, reenters Katia's life, he brings with him a breeze of nostalgia and a reminder of a time when her dreams felt less tethered. As their friendship rekindles, Katia grapples with the idea of making choices for herself, even as the realization that she can no longer have children weighs heavily on her. This novel is a poignant tale of a woman torn between the demands of her heart and the responsibilities she's shouldered for so long. Set against the backdrop of a changing South, this novel delves into the complexities of love, family, and self-discovery in a time of transformation and upheaval.

Nan Abbott Room, Albert L. Scott Library