During the gold rush, women worked alongside men panning and digging for gold and silver in the mountains of Colorado, California, and all the way up to Alaska. While many books have been written about the frontier women who ran brothels and boarding houses in mining towns, none have told the true stories of ladies read more…

Philip Moore has lost his family fortune–and thus his girl–in New York City. Heading west to find riches and win back the object of his affection, Philip finds himself unexpectedly charmed by the unrefined but beautiful daughter of sawmill owner David Wilde. Can Philip and Alice overcome the obstacles– a raging river, brush fires, a read more…

“What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.” William F. Cody-1899 With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of battles and train read more…

A kind hearted ranch hand stops to help a family in need and discovers the meaning of Christmas just when he thinks he’s missed the holiday all together.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America’s Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man’s world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced read more…

From Catherine Hayes, the “Irish prima donna,” and Maude Adams, “the most popular actress in America,” to the legendary Sarah Bernhardt, Gilded Girls profiles fourteen of the liveliest, wildest, and most talented female entertainers ever to light up the boards of the western frontier. You’ll meet “the Jersey Lily,” who was wildly admired by men read more…

More than six decades have passed since Roy Rogers and Dale Evans first rode the celluloid range together, yet they continue to be loved and admired in a way few – if any – celebrities can claim. They co-starred in twenty-nine motion pictures and recorded more than 200 albums together, and they brought their talents read more…

WANTED: A girl who will love, honest, true and not sour;a nice little cooing dove, and willing to work in flour. Desperate to strike it rich during the Gold Rush, thousands of men traveled West to the emerging frontier, where they outnumbered women twelve to one. Only after they arrived did some of them realize read more…

Did you know that pioneer women sewed lead in their hems to keep their dresses from billowing on the trail? Or that hatless men had to wear bonnets to protect their eyes from the scorching sun? From old familiar Levi’s to the short-lived “instant dress elevator,” How the West Was Worn examines the sometimes bizarre, read more…

In these pages you’ll meet a soiled dove who longed for a fairy-tale romance but instead fell for an ailing miner; a quiet schoolmarm who risked life and limb for her adventuresome husband; a spinster who refused to reveal the secrets of her heart despite a proposal from a dashing, prominent rancher; an actress who read more…

Infant Myra is adopted by a wealthy couple and raised in a loving home, unaware of her true parentage and the deception that tore her biological family apart. But when Myra’s adoptive father is riled by her choice of suitor, he reveals the shocking secret of her birth, setting in motion Myra’s fight to regain read more…

On May 17, 1876, Elizabeth Bacon Custer kissed her husband George goodbye and wished him good fortune in his efforts to fulfill the Army?s orders to drive in the Indians who would not relocate to a reservation. The smartly dressed couple made for a splendid picture. This new biography of Elizabeth Bacon Custer tells the read more…

From the world-famous to the relatively obscure, Outlaw Tales of California features true tales of fifteen bandits, outlaws, and no-good scoundrels. From Sacramento to Los Angeles, San Francisco to Nevada City, the frontier towns of California were populated by some of the toughest and most dangerous characters in the West. Tom Bell, the flat-nosed, felon read more…

The picture of the early American West would not be complete without a fashionably dressed madam standing at the top of the saloon stairs surveying the activity below. More than just casual observers, these tough-talking and whip-smart women often had a pistol hidden in the folds of their skirts, ready to take on cowboys, ranchers, read more…

For Joseph Seng and the other death row inmates in the line-up for the Wyoming State Penitentiary All Stars, baseball was literally a game of life or death. Based on primary source documents, some unearthed at the old prison itself, Playing for Time recreates the compelling story of this team of hardened criminals who excelled read more…

From the earliest days of the western frontier, women heeded the call to go west along with their husbands, sweethearts, and parents. While many of these women were attached to the army camps and outposts that dotted the prairies, others were active participants in the skirmishes and battles that took place in the western territories. read more…

Tales Behind the Tombstones tells the stories behind the deaths (or supposed deaths) and burials of the Old West’s most nefarious outlaws, notorious women, and celebrated lawmen. Readers will learn the story behind Calamity Jane’s wish to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok, discover how and where the Earp brothers came to be buried, read more…

In 1944 Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lit up the silver screen in The Cowboy and the Senorita, making their names – and lives – inseparable. It was the start of a fifty-six-year partnership that included thirty motion pictures, a long-running hit television series, and a family of nine children. The Cowboy and the Senorita read more…

“NO WOMEN NEED APPLY.” These four discouraging words of admonition often greeted female physicians looking for jobs in the frontier-era West. Despite the dire need for medical help, it seemed most trappers, miners, and emigrants would rather suffer and die than be treated by a female doctor. Nevertheless dozens of highly trained women headed West, read more…

Amidst mining camps, cow towns, desolate landscapes and filthy boomtowns were a succession of women who survived dangerous gambling games against ruthless rowdy men whose pride was staked on always having the upper hand. In the first book of its kind, author Chris Enss presents an action-filled true portrait of fifteen notorious women gamblers from read more…

“What we want to do is give our women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work that they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay.” —William F. Cody, 1899 With rough-riding cowboys, sure shots, and fantastic reenactments of battles and read more…

Tired of her controlling stepparents, headstrong heiress Annie Howard goes west and encounters a series of adventures–including a blazing prairie fire, a sinking riverboat, the kidnapping of her beloved servant, and, of course, romance. When The Prairie Bride, a classic dime novel, was first published in 1869 by the extremely popular publishing house of Beadle read more…

By the time Stagecoach made John Wayne a silver-screen star in 1939, the thirty-one-year-old was already a veteran of more than sixty films, having twirled six-guns, tossed rope, busted broncos, and foiled cattle rustlers in B westerns for five different studios over the course of a dozen years. By the 1950s he was Hollywood’s most read more…

The year was 1878. Future legends of the Old West–lawmen Charlie Bassett, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Bill Tilghman–patrolled the unruly streets of Dodge City, Kansas, then known as “the wickedest little city in America.” When a cattle baron fled town after allegedly shooting the popular dancehall girl Dora Hand, these four men–all sharpshooters who read more…

Luzena Stanley Wilson became a gold rush banker, storing gold dust in bread pans in her camp oven. Mary Graves survived cannibalism in the Sierras. Madame Moustache lost the love of her life, and her fortune, in a silver camp in Nevada. A storyteller wrote about the West to feed her children. With Great Hope read more…