Get Growing with AAPLD’s Seed Library!

How Does It Work?

Stop by the Adult Services desk at the Main Library on Harnish Drive to browse our Seed Library catalog, or check it out online. You'll find photos and descriptions of each plant variety, helpful information about when, where and how to sow your seeds, and the number of seeds you'll receive. Quantities range from 2 to 20 seeds per packet, depending on the type of plant.

Fill out a seed request form, available at the Adult Services desk, or access our online form. Choose up to 15 different plant varieties, per household, per calendar year. Due to high demand, you cannot make multiple requests for the same seed variety. Leave your request form with an Adult Services staff member, and we'll contact you when your seeds are ready to be picked up. Each seed packet in your order will include planting and care instructions.

What Can I Choose?

We're currently offering over 75 varieties of vegetable, fruit, flower and herb seeds. Choose annuals, which are planted each year, or perennials, which return year after year. You'll find heirloom vegetables, such as the Oxheart and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, Dixie Queen watermelons and White Icicle radishes. Favorites like pumpkins, mixed color carrots, and various types of green beans can turn this summer's garden into a family project. Brighten your landscaping with colorful Four O'Clocks, and the beautiful, exotic Passion Flower. Add color to your home with classic cutting flowers like zinnia and sunflowers.

If It's A Seed Library, Do I Have To Return My Seeds?

While releases by best-selling authors, and critically-acclaimed "buzz books" grabbed the spotlight in 2021, there are plenty of great releases still waiting to be discovered.

Meet the Overlooked Books of 2021! These include books from nearly every fiction genre, plus non-fiction on a variety of topics, from exploring Mount Everest to a memoir by a professional gambler.

We've created a display in the Main Library Adult Services section of 2021's Overlook Books (you'll know it by the googly eyes!), and an online catalog that you can browse from home. We've also highlighted a few of our favorite Overlooked Books by genre, and hope it leads you discover a hidden gem!

Leda and the Swan by Anna Caritj - After a wild Halloween party, sorority girl Leda awakens to find she isn't exactly sure what happened the night before. Did she have sex with the guy she went home with? And what about Charlotte, the mysterious girl dressed as a swan, whose paths crossed Leda's several times, but who is now missing? As the campus buzzes with tension and speculation, Leda begins to realize that her fractured recollections may hold the key to Charlotte's disappearance. A unique debut novel set in the early-2000s, that blends suspense and mystery, with issues of gender, power and sexual assault on campus.

Half Life by Jillian Cantor - Poland, 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted Marya was not good enough, he broke off the engagement. Heartbroken, Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would attend the Sorbonne to study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

But what if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity with a constant hunger for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted? Entwining Marie Curie’s real story with Marya Zorawska’s fictional one, Half Life explores loves lost and destinies unfulfilled—and probes issues of loyalty and identity, gender and class, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity, scholarship and knowledge.

The Cat Saw Murder by Dolores Hitchens - Love cat-themed mysteries? This 1939 mystery launched the popular trend, which continues today. When 70-year-old Miss Rachel and her cat Samantha visit Rachel's niece Lily at her California beach home, they discover Lily's home is actually a decrepit rooming house, and Lily herself is in desperate need of money to settle a gambling debt. With Samantha the cat named as the heir of a eccentric relative's fortune, Lily sees feline murder as the solution to her problem, until her own mysterious demise. Can Miss Rachel and Samantha solve the mystery? Part cozy/part California noir, this throwback classic is a fascinating and fun read.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - A time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved. Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English—instead of French—the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.

The Third Pole by Mark Synott - A hundred-year mystery lured veteran climber Mark Synnott into an unlikely expedition up Mount Everest during the spring 2019 season that came to be known as "the Year Everest Broke." What he found was a gripping human story of impassioned characters from around the globe and a mountain that will consume your soul--and your life--if you let it. Readers witness first-hand how Synnott's quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan high plateau, and up the North Face into a massive storm. The infamous traffic jams of climbers at the very summit immediately resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese officials turned on Synnott's team. An Indian woman miraculously crawled her way to frostbitten survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope--one slip and no one would have been able to save him--committed to solving the mystery. Eleven climbers died on Everest that season, all of them mesmerized by an irresistible magic. The Third Pole is a rapidly accelerating ride to the limitless joy and horror of human obsession.

You Can't Lose Them All: Tales of a Degenerate Gambler and His Ridiculous Friends by Sal Iacono and Jimmy Kimmel - Over the last forty years, Cousin Sal has made bets with doctors, lawyers, teachers, agents, bookies, writers, comedians, radio DJs, tv producers, baseball players, front office executives, bandleaders, movie stars, publicists, weed lab owners, hedge fund operators, and even professional wrestlers. From his early days growing up in Brooklyn and Long Island flipping baseball cards to now hosting podcasts and TV shows and managing several offshore accounts we don't talk about, Cousin Sal has truly become the average American sports fan's go to source for gambling tips. With hilarious tales of love and loss, winning and (a lot) of losing, crazy family and fatherhood, and a life saga that inspired the Phil Collins' song, "Against All Odds," Cousin Sal has now written THE Vegas super-system, MIT-algorithmic, sharp-approved book for how to gamble like a pro -- or at least not how not to go broke and lose your kids to Child Protective Services.

Adult Fiction

With 396 check-outs, The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah was AAPLD's most popular Adult Fiction selection of 2021.

Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. Elsa Martinelli must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

With 289 check-outs, our second most popular Adult Fiction book is The Guest List by Lucy Foley.

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

Young Adult Fiction

With 41 check-outs, our Young Adult check-out champ is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Feyre's survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill – the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. When she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator and killing something so precious comes at a price. Dragged to a magical kingdom for the murder of a faerie, Feyre discovers that her captor, his face obscured by a jewelled mask, is hiding far more than his piercing green eyes would suggest. Feyre's presence at the court is closely guarded, and as she begins to learn why, her feelings for him turn from hostility to passion and the faerie lands become an even more dangerous place. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse, or she will lose him forever.

With 38 check-outs, Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer is the Young Adult runner-up!

When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan met in Twilight, an iconic love story was born. But until now, fans have heard only Bella's side of the story. This unforgettable tale as told through Edward's eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward's past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger?

Movies

Our most checked-out movie in 2021 was Godzilla vs. Kong, with 148 check-outs!

Legends collide as Godzilla and Kong, the two most powerful forces of nature, clash in a spectacular battle for the ages. As a squadron embarks on a perilous mission into fantastic uncharted terrain, unearthing clues to the Titans' very origins and mankind's survival, a conspiracy threatens to wipe the creatures, both good and bad, from the face of the earth forever.

Black Widow, with 132 check-outs, was the second most popular movie at AAPLD in 2021!

In Marvel Studios' action-packed spy thriller "Black Widow," Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

Algonquin Library Adult Services

Month: January 2022