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.

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.

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.

The second installment in Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow. “Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind . . . A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and ‘how utterly it rips apart our lives.'” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author’s wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life’s sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow. The second title from Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, Planet Claire takes readers on a journey of sorrow that recalls memorable works by C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed), Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), and Julian Barnes (Levels of Life). Porter’s memoir, however, is also playful, quirky, and self-ironic in a way that challenges the genre’s traditional solemnity. Like the novel Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, this is an unpredictably funny account of heartbreak, as if to say there’s something about the magnitude of loss that troubles even earnestness.

During a dire battle against the fearsome Skinners, Daine and her mage teacher Numair are swept into the Divine Realms. Though happy to be alive, they are not where they want to be. They are desperately needed back home, where their old enemy, Ozorne, and his army of strange creatures are waging war against Tortall. Trapped in the mystical realms Daine discovers her mysterious parentage. And as these secrets of her past are revealed so is the treacherous way back to Tortall. So they embark on an extraordinary journey home, where the fate of all Tortall rests with Daine and her wild magic.

"This tense wire of a novel thrums with suspense. . . . [this book] just might be the highlight of your summer.”–The New York Times Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets The Revenant in this heart-pounding story of survival and revenge in the unforgiving wilderness. After: Jess is alone. Her cabin has burned to the ground. She knows if she doesn’t act fast, the cold will kill her before she has time to worry about food. But she is still alive—for now. Before: Jess hadn’t seen her survivalist, off-the-grid dad in over a decade. But after a car crash killed her mother and left her injured, she was forced to move to his cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness. Just as Jess was beginning to get to know him, a secret from his past paid them a visit, leaving her father dead and Jess stranded. After: With only her father’s dog for company, Jess must forage and hunt for food, build shelter, and keep herself warm. Some days it feels like the wild is out to destroy her, but she’s stronger than she ever imagined. Jess will survive. She has to. She knows who killed her father…and she wants revenge.