Reading Recommendations: Dreams Beneath Your Feet, A Novel of the Mountain Men, Win Blevins.

Eighteen years have passed since Sam Morgan of Pennsylvania began his mountain man career in the Rocky Mountains. Now, with the fur trade in decline, California beckons despite the bitter memory it represents, Sam's beloved Crow Indian wife, Meadowlark, died there in childbirth. But Sam has friends in California who convince him that his destiny lies on the Pacific shore.

Sam, his daughter, and their friends make their way into the Oregon country to collect a herd of Appaloosa horses that they will sell in California. When they stop at Fort Hall on the Oregon Trail, a brutalized Hawaiian woman named Lei Palua asks Sam for protection. She tells a tale of horror: She has escaped the clutches of a psychopath called Kanaka Boy, a renegade former laborer for the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver.

Kanaka Boy, Lei's former lover, and his gang of killers have been terrifying Indian villages in the Northwest, murdering women and children and taking others as captives to be sold into slavery in Mexico.

Sam Morgan and his people take Lei Palua under their wing, not knowing that the sadistic Kanaka Boy is dogging her trail, determined to kill her and all who stand in her defense.

And, The Charlemagne Pursuit, a novel, Steve Berry.

As a child, former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone was told his father died in a submarine disaster in the North Atlantic, but now he wants the full story and asks his ex-boss, Stephanie Nelle, to secure the military files. What he learns stuns him: His father's sub was a secret nuclear vessel lost on a highly classified mission beneath the ice shelves of Antarctica.

But Malone isn't the only one after the truth. Twin sisters Dorothea Lindauer and Christl Falk are fighting for the fortune their mother has promised to which ever of them discovers what really became of their father who died on the same submarine that Malone's father captained.

The sisters know something Malone doesn't: Inspired by strange clues discovered in Charlemagne's tomb, the Nazis explored Antarctica before the Americans, as long ago as 1938. Now Malone discovers that cryptic journals penned in "the language of heaven", inscrutable conundrams posed by an ancient historian, and the ill-fated voyage of his father are all tied to a revelation of immense consequence for humankind.

In an effort to ensure that this explosive information never rises to the surface, Langford Ramsey, an ambitious navy admiral, has begun a brutal game of treachery, blackmail and assassination. As Malone embarks on a dangerous quest with the sisters, one that leads them from an ancient German cathedral to a snowy French citadel to the unforgiving ice of Antarctica, he will finally confront the shocking truth of his father's death and the distinct possibility of his own. A real cliff hanger!

And, Texas Sunrise, Two Novels of the Texas Republic, Elmer Kelton.

In Texas Sunrise, Elmer Kelton brings together two novels that tell the story of the Texas Revolution through the eyes of Thomas and Joshua Buckalew. The Buckalew brothers, originally from Tennessee, immigrate to Texas at a time when the Mexican controlled province is welcoming American settlers.

Massacre at Goliad tells of the inevitable tensions that mount between Mexican authorities and the American newcomers. Revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but Joshua fears. Even so, Joshua, who has Mexican friends and is in love with a Mexican girl, pledges to take up arms with his brother if necessary.

The centerpiece of the story is the infamous Goliad massacre of March 27, 1836, which is followed a month later by Sam Houston's victory at San Jacinto, the decisive battle that makes Texas an independent republic.

After The Bugles begins where Goliad ends, on the battlefield at San Jacinto. Along with other settlers whose lives have been disrupted by the revolution, Joshua Buckalew tries to put the pieces back together. He finds that starting over in the aftermath of war can be as challenging as war itself. The racial differences that helped to mount the conflict have not disappeared, and being an independent republic can be more difficult than being a colony of Mexico.

See you at Rylander!