She Rode West: Tales of Courage, Dust, and Destiny shines a long-overdue spotlight on the bold, complex women who helped shape the American frontier. While legends of the West tend to favor outlaws, lawmen, and lone riders, this powerful anthology—featuring stories by Chris Enss, Natalie Bright, Kimberly Burns, Dani Nichols, Betsy Randolph, Sharon Frame Gay, JoAnn […]

Gangsters. Lovers. Legends. Meet the Kellys—the bootlegging, bank-robbing, husband-wife duo known as “Machine Gun” Kelly and Kathyrn Thorne—who masterminded one of the most infamous kidnappings in American crime . . . How did a small-time, hip-pocket bootlegger become one of the most notorious gangsters in the country? For George “Machine Gun” Kelly, the answer was […]

  The era of Wild West Shows revealed America at its most enterprising. Join Pawnee Bill and May Manning Lillie as they embark on a wild, sometimes tragic, but often joyful ride together. Theirs was a love story that rose to every challenge and seized every opportunity that came their way. They made headlines in […]

“No women need apply.” Western towns looking for a local doctor during the frontier era often concluded their advertisements in just that manner. Yet apply they did. And in small towns all over the West, highly trained women from medical colleges in the East took on the post of local doctor to great acclaim. In […]

The discovery of gold in the southern Black Hills in 1874 set off one of the great gold rushes in America. In 1876, miners moved into the northern Black Hills. That’s where they came across a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold and Deadwood was born. Practically overnight, the tiny […]

On October 20, 1882, future actress Margaret Dumont was born in Brooklyn, New York. A Broadway regular by the 1920s, Dumont found lasting fame once she started appearing with the Marx Brothers. Tall and regal in bearing, her character provided the perfect foil to the wisecracking Groucho Marx in a series of films including A Night […]

In Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeos and Wild West Shows, New York Times best-selling author Chris Enss introduces readers to the world of the early rodeo – and to the stories of the women whose names resounded in rodeo arenas across the nation in the early twentieth century.  These […]

There weren’t many women in the late 1800s who had the opportunity to accompany their husbands on adventures that were so exciting they seemed fictitious. Such was the case for the women married to the officers in General George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. There were seven officers’ wives. They were all good friends who traveled […]

An Englishwoman born in 1831, Isabella Bird was frequently ill as a child and young woman, and her doctors recommended a life of travel and fresh air as the cure. Ultimately, she took the advice and traveled the world. And traveled. And traveled. Bird connected with the beauty of the Colorado Plains and the valleys […]

When the last spike was hammered into the steel track of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, Western Union lines sounded the glorious news of the railroad’s completion from New York to San Francisco. For more than five years an estimated four thousand men mostly Irish working west from Omaha […]

Take one well-oiled effective killing machine, add a familiar hero on the ground, in the air, and on horseback; stir in a ghastly end that’s surely impossible to escape, add action, add passion, made on a shoestring budget at breakneck speed, and you’ve got the recipe for Republic Pictures. Who, after all, cannot forget The […]

In a time when notorious Depression Era criminals were terrorizing the country, the Barker-Karpis Gang stole more money than mobsters John Dillinger, Vern Miller, and Bonnie and Clyde combined. Five of the most wanted thieves, murderers, and kidnappers by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the 1930s were from the same family. Authorities believe the […]

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

This collection of short stories of the women who entertained the West in makeshift theaters and palaces built to showcase the divas who were beloved by emigrants to the “uncivilized” West will feature well-known and lesser known dancers, singers, and actresses and their exploits. Author Chris Enss will bring her comedic timing and long experience […]

Colorado Territory in 1864 wasn’t merely the wild west, it was a land in limbo while the Civil War raged in the east and politics swirled around its potential admission to the union. The territorial governor, John Evans, had ambitions on the national stage should statehood occur–and he was joined in those ambitions by a […]