Forsythe has only days to discover the startling answer to a secret held close for over 40 years by both Russian and US officials....or die trying.Also see Smith's latest "The Vatican's Last Secret".

    

    Killing the biggest deer in his life, Elliott’s joy is short-lived when he is swooped down upon by a tornado, which ‘whirls away’ his deer and leaves him battered and bruised without family or farm, all destroyed by the airborne killer! Elliott finds himself alone and soon hunted by old friends who realize that he has discovered a hoard of Spanish silver dollars hidden in his father’s “Posthole Bank”! Thus begins Elliott’s adventures as a man and fur trapper in the wilderness, attempting to find his fur trapper brother Jacob. As a ‘greenhorn’, he finds himself betrayed by trappers posing as friends who soon abandon him on the prairie! There he faces starvation and then a chance meeting with a mentor occurs. In the years that followed, “Bear Scat” faces capture by the deadly Sioux, becomes a Mountain Man in the territory of the deadly Blackfeet, faces grizzly bear attacks, ‘moose madness’, deadly Indian battles, experiences heartaches in opportunities lost trying to find his elusive brother, is engaged in a deadly fight with white trappers resulting in a sad loss, all ending in an unexpected surprise! Elliott “Bear Scat” Sutta, Mountain Man is an epic story of the life and times of a Mountain Man who rises from the ashes and tries to find his brother in an unexplored West that was young, dangerous and yet beautiful beyond compare, told only as a man can tell it who “was there”…

    But heartbreak awaits among the tidy gardens and green lawns and soon seventeen-year-old Alison is forced to take on responsibility for her out-of-work father and brothers and put her own ambitions aside.Love as well as loss threatens Alison’s future, however, and leads her into a relationship with teacher Jim Abbott, an affair which her brothers, even the brooding Henry, are powerless to understand, let alone prevent. Throughout the Depression years of the early 30s, the Burnsides – united by a shared heritage yet divided by their dreams – square up to the challenge of poverty and fight to hold the family together, whatever the cost.

    FICTION: Poolside at their motel, the Fab Four fell into conversation with a snappy-dressing local named Bert the Shirt, who listened as the band worked out a harmony to the most beautiful song he’d ever heard--and wouldn’t hear again for over half a century. FACT: That night, the Beatles played an unannounced free concert in the motel bar. Everyone was welcome. Local musicians showed up with guitars and keyboards, and had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of jamming with the Beatles till 4 am. This legendary event has forever after been known to Key West locals as THE PARADISE GIG.FICTION: Next day, hung over and exhausted, the Beatles left for the airport, having somehow lost a stained and battered notebook that held a priceless stash of unrecorded songs. NOW CUT TO THE PRESENT: A beautiful woman is doing a yoga headstand on a Key West beach when she’s abducted by a pair of thugs. An aspiring young singer is offered a recording deal that seems a bit too good to be true. Bad things happen to a couple of one-hit wonders…And old Bert hears a new song that is hauntingly familiar, but that he can’t quite place.Could it possibly be the same song he’d heard at poolside so many years before? Could it be that all the present mayhem circles back through the decades to THE PARADISE GIG? Could the precious, even sacred, Beatles notebook possibly turn up after all these years? Could Bert be the hero who would rediscover that stash of unheard songs for music lovers everywhere—and save a young singer’s life in the process? With Nacho, his intrepid Chihuahua, at his side, and with no one but bumbling detective Pete Amsterdam for an ally, the undaunted Bert the Shirt sets out through the Florida haze to piece it all together, learning along the way how much the world has changed—and how much it has not. In equal parts suspenseful and nostalgic, funny and romantic, this time-bending caper celebrates the power of music and the many tricks of memory, the joys of youth and the comforts of age, and the free and funky spirit of Key West.

    Sometimes it feels like we are all on a different planet earth. Sometimes we are!