diff --git a/amanuensis/database.py b/amanuensis/database.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af00d45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/amanuensis/database.py
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+from sqlalchemy import create_engine
+from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
+from sqlalchemy.orm import scoped_session
+from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmaker
+
+
+engine = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:')
+
+# Thread-safe db session
+session = scoped_session(sessionmaker(bind=engine))
+
+# Base class for ORM models
+ModelBase = declarative_base(engine)