It’s no secret that most men don’t read much in a given year. Every other week there’s a headline skating across your newsfeed about it, citing the odd study and concluding with a helpless shrug that the problem is unsolvable. “What’re ya gonna do? Streaming is just so popular.”
Personally, I read around a hundred titles a year because the bug bit me when I was young. Now I spend most of my time behind a windshield, reeling in the miles on long hauls, and audiobooks keep me company. Always have. If you didn’t pick up the habit when you were young, fear not: I know plenty of seasoned gentlemen who started late with leisure reading, and a few of them credited youth fiction as a catalyst. Ten years ago, I was working in demolition in Las Vegas amid a crew of grunts and dropouts, and in a moment of downtime I asked if anyone was reading anything. I still remember how my co-worker was reluctant to admit that he, at twenty-five, was a few books into the Percy Jackson series. No shame! Those are good fun, and we all start somewhere.
Ark Press is a new publisher that launched in 2025, and right out of the gate, they’ve declared their ambition to “Make a Man (Who Reads) Out Of You,” whether you’re young enough to be starry-eyed or old enough to resent April 15 every year. Their adventure series for teens, called American Treasure Hunters, kicks off with The Hunt for Confederate Gold by Andrew M. Dare, officially released this week.
The series aims for a similar audience as the Hardy Boys novels, and has an impressive six titles lined up for release in 2026 alone, according to the series’ Amazon page. Each story features a trio of North Carolina teens — Porter, Ben, and Latch — who have a knack for untangling historical mysteries, pursuant to their plans to launch a podcast. It’s a little bit National Treasure, a little bit Scooby-Doo (without the dog), and just “current-year” enough to be relevant without being “cringe,” as the kids say.
While the inaugural book is set in North Carolina, future titles will take the team to the Alamo, or to Boston, or other sites where whispers of treasure echo on the winds of local lore. The guys and their supporting cast (three girls and the friendly A/V kid) are connected to patrons who can lend special equipment if they need it — things like scuba tanks, metal detectors, GoPro cameras, and more — which keeps the story moving at a good pace.
The pace is key. Remember, authors who write for young readers are in the most competitive market for attention in human history. If a book is going to beat TikTok, it has to move at a good clip and be engaging the whole time. That’s a tall order, but after reading a review copy, I can say that The Hunt for Confederate Gold (mostly) pulls this off.
The story itself is pretty straightforward: The boys stumble upon the wreckage of a long-lost Confederate steamer, possibly revealing the location of the famed Confederate treasury, which went missing around the end of the Civil War. To know what they’re dealing with, Ben, Latch, and Porter will have to confer with local historians and check their discoveries against a database of old records. Once they’re attacked and threatened by a shadowy figure attached to the wreck, they know they’re hot on the trail.
Things accelerate from there in a way that is familiar to seasoned readers while still providing a pleasant journey of discovery. Throw in some coming-of-age drama and a robust cast of characters, and you’ve got plenty of intrigue to keep it moving. The guys are worried about finishing school, graduating, and figuring out what comes next. There are girlfriends. There are siblings. They have money concerns, and college looms on the horizon. Readers will either be at an age where they identify with that or old enough to remember it and relate. It’s a reliable recipe and a smooth entry point for readers of all ages.
If I had any complaints about the first book, I’d say that sometimes it reads like an older man assuming how a younger one thinks, with bits of inner monologue sounding a little too mature (or dare I say reasonable) for a young man, even one with a high GPA. You could chalk that up to the author writing a character who is simply thorough, cautious, and likes to think things through before making a rash decision, and it’s that quality that makes them well-suited to hunt historic treasure as teenagers. I just found myself arching an eyebrow here and there.
The mystery and the adventure were a lot of fun, but for my money, the best parts were the historical discussions and tidbits sprinkled throughout the book. Since we’re dealing with missing Confederate bullion, it would behoove the reader to know how much bullion we’re talking about, what it’s worth, why it’s there, and why nobody has found it before now. Since the plot relies on knowing why the South seceded, we’re treated to some very sound exposition on the subject, the extent of the role of slavery in the war at large, and the virtues of Robert E. Lee as the army’s leader. There’s even a moment where a Northern mischaracterization of Jefferson Davis gets corrected; it stood out to me because I just so happened to read a biography about Davis last year, and the writer set the record straight on Davis’ condition at the end of the war and how he tried to flee.
No, I won’t elaborate; you should read this book. It’s good. It’s clean. It’s fun. It might even be the one that gets you back into reading, if you haven’t picked something up in a while. Before I cracked it open, I thought it was a risky choice to begin this brand-new series with a Confederate adventure. Having read the book, I like that they went that route. No excuses, no histrionics, just the facts. Our heroes are solving a mystery downstream of those facts, and they have to stick to them if they’re going to find the treasure. Facts, like young boys, are stubborn things.
American Treasure Hunters is currently scheduled to release multiple titles on Kindle throughout the summer and into the fall of 2026. The Hunt for Confederate Gold is available in hardcover now at Ark Press. If the first installment is any indicator of what to expect, I’m looking forward to more. Give it a try, gents.
