Reluctant Hero

After nearly 10 years of conflicted silence, a celebrated 9/11 survivor--who helped a woman in a wheelchair escape the North Tower minutes before it collapsed--describes what it was like for him living with memories of 9/11 for the past decade.

Adrian Mole meets South Park as an outrageously crude 13-year-old boy learns some important lessons.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, Michael Benfante went to work, just like he had day after day, at his office on eighty-first floor in the World Trade Center North Tower. Moments after the first plane struck, just twelve floors above him, Benfante organized his terrified employees, getting them out the office and moving down the stairwells. On his way down, he and another co-worker encountered a woman in a wheelchair on the sixty-eighth floor. Benfante, the woman and Benfante’s co-worker then embarked on a ninety-six-minute odyssey of escape—the two men carrying the woman down sixty-eight flights of stairs out of the North Tower and into an ambulance that rushed her to safety just minutes before the tower imploded. A CBS video camera caught Benfante just as he got out the building, and almost immediately, the national media came calling. Benfante sat on the couch with Oprah Winfrey, where she hailed him as a hero. Almost one year to the day after 9/11, Benfante got married and the woman in the wheelchair sat in the front row. That’s the storybook ending. But in the aftermath of 9/11, Benfante began a journey fraught with wrenching personal challenges of critical emotional and psychological depth in Reluctant Hero. Benfante shares the trappings of his public heroism, the loneliness of his private anguish, and the hope he finds for himself and for us. Because all of us—whether we were in the towers, in New York City, or someplace else—we are all 9/11 survivors.

What She Needs . . . Texas in the 1880s is a wild and lawless land, where a woman fending for herself is a rare breed. Andrea Jackson is just that. A woman who went against the grain by writing bestselling novels instead of marrying and staying at home. But with her muse, and her money dried up, she’s in desperate need of a hero. And Sheriff Matthew Knight has just the right material. Only He Can Give . . . Matthew doesn’t know what to make of the sassy, bright-eyed, temptress who insists on following him around. He’s nobody’s hero, and he doesn’t believe in fairy tales. What he is, is a man. With a man’s needs. And there’s something about the feisty, determined, vixen, he just can’t seem to shake . . . Previously published in My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

A high-flying adventure in second chances… Parnell’s first and only love is flying. He’ll never fall in love. He’ll never have kids. And He’ll never, ever be a hero. So the last thing he needs is some do-gooder and her orphans when he’s struggling to keep his air cargo business solvent. Rebecca Hollis believes caring for others is the road to happiness. Tasked to shepherd five orphans on a flight to a conclave to meet prospective adoptive parents, she learns it takes much more. The plane is caught in the grip of a snowstorm that sends it plunging into a frozen wilderness. Rebecca determines she and the disagreeable pilot must work together to insure the survival and rescue of the orphans. Parnell Stillman has other ideas. So do the orphans. Rescue means a return to foster homes and an uncaring welfare system. Or maybe not.

Long ago, when gods and heroes walked the earth in triumph and tragedy, true love and epic deeds were set among the stars... In the city of ancient Corinth, Bellerophon grew up in the corridors of the palace, haunted by his father’s gruesome death, and distrusted and ignored by the rest of his own family. He now spends his life in the shadows of society, and that is how he prefers it. However, the Gods of Olympus have something more in mind for him. After a violent incident in the mountains, Bellerophon is banished from his home for all time. His path leads him to the court of an aged king in Tiryns where he is welcomed at first, but due to the spiteful queen, he is wrongly accused of another crime in a world that seems endlessly cruel. Dejected and uncaring of what happens to him and his hateful life, Bellerophon is sent across the sea to the court of King Iobates of Lykia. At the urging of his seer, the king welcomes Bellerophon as an honoured guest in his home, until he discovers the reason for his arrival. Seeking a way to be rid of Bellerophon, without violating the sacred laws of Zeus, King Iobates commands that he complete three impossible tasks to prove his innocence or bring about his death. With the world set against him, Bellerophon welcomes his imminent end. That is, until he meets the king’s daughter, Philonoe, the only person who has ever believed in him, and whose father has kept a dark secret from for many years. With the Gods and Lykia’s princess on his side, can Bellerophon prove his innocence and help save Lykia and its people? Will he finally accept the fate that the Gods have pressed upon him? Or will he succumb to the despair and hopelessness that have dogged him all of his life? Only by facing his deepest fears and a creature more terrible than any other of the Gods’ creation can Bellerophon truly succeed and become the hero he is meant to be... The Reluctant Hero is an epic retelling of the story of Bellerophon and the Chimera from Greek mythology. It is the fourth book in the Mythologia fantasy series by best-selling and award-winning author and historian, Adam Alexander Haviaras. If you enjoy books by Madeline Miller, Stephen Fry, Natalie Haynes or Jennifer Saint then you will love the Mythologia series. Read The Reluctant Hero today and witness the rise of one of the greatest heroes of the ancient world!

In 2011, by chance I discovered the after-action reports of the 329th Infantry Regiment, my father’s World War II unit, on the Internet. An idea was born: use these to reconstruct my father’s path in Europe. I would take my three children, Richard, Mary, and Stephen, on a trip to retrace those footsteps. This book is about our travels, but it is much more. It documents the life of a man and his family, the history of a unit, and how, through research and luck, we were able piece together the story. As far as possible, I tell the tale of my father’s life with pictures and artifacts from that life. In parallel, I relate the history of the unit he joined in combat, inserting pictures where I can. In fitting all the records together with the trip itself, I discovered my father in new ways and built a memory for my children. In an appendix, I give you a guide as to how you can do this for your veterans as well.

Ray Griffin is an unfortunate street musician. His wife divorced him and left with their eight-year-old daughter. He has had nothing but bad luck and a series of misfortunes since leaving Texas. Ray became homeless and moved away. He wants to get his life back on track and find a permanent job, so he can regain custody of his daughter. Will Ray overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles on his path? Will he see his daughter, whom he has not seen for a long time, and reunite with her?