Our Story This book was born when three friends had the same realization at the same time on the same night. The realization was hysterically simple. They realized that they were "alive." And then they realized, "holy shit," that's pretty amazing. Now we, the authors, can imagine you, the reader, sitting there reading that last sentence and silently mouthing "Duh" to yourself. But before you mouth anything, we'd just ask that you take a second and query yourself the following: How much of your day is spent living in the base-line awareness that your very existence is a friggin' miracle? The reason I ask is because if I had to wager, I'd say it's not nearly as much as the time you spent wishing your job was more fulfilling, that your parents were less annoying, that your partner was nicer, or that your kids were easier, the weather was better, your bank account was fatter, that you were skinnier, the list goes on and on....If you get depressed thinking about that, take heart. You're not alone. Most of us do this. We humans go through life with this sort of low-level hum of dissatisfaction. It's a big part of what makes us, us. In fact, it's this drive to change our circumstances, to improve, to hack our conditions, that has helped us grow from small bands of hunter gatherers to larger agricultural societies to the enormous, interdependent information-based mega-cities of today. Yet all this thinking and emoting and striving and doing and struggling has come at a terrible cost. We've lost the ability to do one very essential thing, which is honor the "holy-shit- ness" of our of daily existence. Why? Perhaps because this precious gift called consciousness is so seamless and glitch-free that for most of our lives we feel like it's not enough. It's almost too vanilla. So what do we do? We pile thoughts, memories, resentments, hopes, expectations over it like toppings at an ice cream sundae bar, until the bare miraculous fact of this "I am-ness" is completely covered. It is our hope that this book can be a fun, thought-provoking, sense-stimulating way to strip off all the crap we put on our perfect scoops of consciousness ice-cream so that we can all live in the joyous reality of the one thing we should never, ever forget. Holy Shit, We're Alive.

"Your life isn't over." My dad says this. "I mean, YOUR life isn't over. Beyond the kids. You'll go on living, doing things. This isn't it." I know, I assure him. I have the kids. They need me. They're my life now. "OK," he replies, then grunts—more of a brief hum. He only hums when he thinks I'm full of shit. Shockingly single. Amy Biancolli's life went off script more dramatically than most after her husband of twenty years jumped off the roof of a parking garage. Left with three children, a three-story house, and a pile of knotty psychological complications, Amy realizes the flooding dishwasher, dead car battery, rapidly growing lawn, basement sump pump, and broken doorknob aren't going to fix themselves. She also realizes that "figuring shit out" means accepting the horrors that came her way, rolling with them, slogging through them, helping others through theirs, and working her way through life with love and laughter. Amy Biancolli is an author and journalist whose column appears in the Albany Times Union. Before that, Amy served as film critic for the Houston Chronicle where her reviews, published around the country, won her the 2007 Comment and Criticism Award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Biancolli is the author of House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts, which earned her Albany Author of the Year. Amy lives in Albany, New York, with her three children.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. “Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER

A humorous, trenchant and fascinating examination of how Western culture's taboo words have evolved over the millennia

#1 New York Times Bestseller Over 10 million copies sold In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.

Before leaving for Vietnam, twenty-one year old Fred Krebsbach received a piece of advice from his uncle: carry something with you into combat that will give you comfort in a time of need. He figured it was worth a shot and chose his First Communion rosary. This turned out to be a life-changing, maybe even life-saving, decision. Sent into combat as an M-60 machine gunner, for almost seven months Fred faced danger from booby traps, enemy combatants, and the jungle itself. After becoming injured and returning from the hospital he gave up the M-60 to become a squad leader for Special Forces. He endured seven more months of constant change and surprise, but one companion was constant a voice inside his head that helped him find the right course of action to keep him alive. To this day Fred doesn't know what it was exactly, but it may have had something to do with that dang rosary! Though he survived Vietnam, Fred was changed in irrevocable ways. He hopes his story helps his grandchildren and other young people understand the cost of combat and the value of thinking it through before engaging in war.

USA TODAY BESTSELLING BOOK! Mike Majlak was a seventeen-year-old from a loving, middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting OxyContin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends. Unable to escape the noose of addiction, he eventually lost the trust and support of everyone who had ever loved him. Alone, with nothing but drugs to keep him company, darkness closed in, and the light inside him--the last flicker of hope--began to dim. His dreams, potential, and future were all being devoured by a relentless addiction too powerful to fight. Despair filled him as he realized he wasn't going to survive. Somehow, he did... HE NOT ONLY SURVIVED, HE THRIVED. Now he's a social media personality with millions of followers, and an entrepreneur, marketer, podcaster, YouTuber, and author who hopes to use his voice to shine a light for those whose own lights have grown dim. This is his story.