Death Is Not An Option Stories

“Ruthlessly frank. . . . Recalls Holden Caulfield by way of John Hughes.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) In these stories, a teacher obsesses over a student who comes to class with scratch marks on his face; a Catholic girl graduating high school finds a warped kind of redemption in her school’s contrived class rituals; and a woman looking to rent a house is sucked into a strangely inappropriate correspondence with one of the landlords. These are just a few of the powerful plotlines in Suzanne Rivecca’s gorgeously wrought collection. From a college student who adopts a false hippie persona to find love, to a young memoirist who bumps up against a sexually obsessed fan, the characters in these fiercely original tales grapple with what it means to be honest with themselves and the world. These stories explode “with piercing insight . . . illuminating the dangerous dance between victims and saviors. [They] deliver us to the edge of grief, that precarious place where the moral compass spins—where codes of love and law and religion fail. Mercy here depends on a tiger’s sublime grace, our capacity to resist deeper harm, and the right of every broken being to remain silent” (Melanie Rae Thon).

On a fateful day in May of 1997, Mark Colburn, a Navy SEAL with the elite Leap Frog parachuting team, prepared to make the last jump of the day with his two team members. Mark jumped from a plane at 12,000 feet in the sky above Brown's field in Otay Mesa, California. After free-falling to three-thousand feet, Mark opened his chute. But the SEAL above him did not and continued free-falling at ninety miles an hour. The other jumper tore through Mark's chute, hitting him in the head and hand with his body. The impact sent Mark twirling unconscious through the air with few cells left on his chute, and he hit the ground, changing his life forever. Suffering from broken bones and a severe brain injury, Mark's amazing recovery became his biggest challenge. With incredible courage, humor, and enduring love of life and family, he continued to improve. His mother, author Liliane Colburn, tells his story of hope, despair, triumph, and the powerful bond between mother and son. But most of all, Liliane shares the strength and spirit that guides them both.

Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.

"Anguished, beautifully written... The Long Goodbye is an elegiac depiction of drama as old as life." -- The New York Times Book Review From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love. What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief-its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies-an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond. O'Rourke's story is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness-and separating from her husband-left her fundamentally altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of immeasurable loss. With lyricism and unswerving candor, The Long Goodbye conveys the fleeting moments of joy that make up a life, and the way memory can lead us out of the jagged darkness of loss. Effortlessly blending research and reflection, the personal and the universal, it is not only an exceptional memoir, but a necessary one.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Youssef Aziz immigrated to the United States the year after the Gulf War to escape persecution from Saddam Hussein for helping the Americans. Youssef has an American education, but unknown to his family and close associates, he maintains close ties with one of the radical Islamic factions in Iraq. Youssef's plans to destroy America have lain dormant in him waiting until the right moment to attack.

What can adventurers, athletes, inventors, and generals teach us about how to live in the modern world? In The Merchant of Death is Dead, pop historian, asset manager, and newspaper columnist Scott A. Grant shares some of his favorite columns. Stories in the book include those of inventor Alfred Nobel, writer Zora Neale Hurston, football player Deacon Jones, surgeon John Snow, adventurer Annie Edson Taylor, visionary Benjamin Franklin, swimmer Gertrude Ederle, clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger, General James Doolittle, golfers Johnny Miller and Jack Nicklaus, athletes "Bullet" Bob Hayes and Mack Robinson, and First Lady Frances Cleveland, plus events such as the discovery of the South Pole, Nazi spies landing on a north Florida beach, and economic bubbles through the years. Scott A. Grant studied economics and history at Cornell University before working on Wall Street. He later earned a law degree from Rutgers University. Over the last fourteen years he has been a regular columnist for two newspapers and has perfected several history presentations. After two years of touring the local northeast Florida civic clubs, museums, and schools, he was asked to produce a book. This is his first publication. He is delighted to share his knowledge of history and investments.

This book is written in the conviction that the church is called into being and nourished by the Word of God that comes through Scripture. But how can Scripture offer any specific guidance for hearers lives today? What are modern readers to make of the dragons and slaughtered lambs in the book of Revelation? What are we to make of a man who turns water into wine while comparing himself to bread? Can people today know what the Bible says and means? The world of the Bible is strange and distant, not only in time and space but also in language, culture, and in its basic assumptions about reality. The first task in both pulpit and pew is not to be in too great a hurry to overcome this distance, but to acknowledge it and respect it. Communication across the gap is the task of the church's preachers and teachers. Drawing on his years of teaching and study, Gene Boring offers a way of opening the ears of those who take the message of the Bible seriously, a message from a world different from our own. Beginning with Revelation, Gene provides a historically informed and pastorally sensitive reading of the various Johannine voices in the New Testament for contemporary preachers and teachers.