The long and bloody Civil War is at an end. Zee Mimms, the dutiful and reserved daughter of a preacher, is tasked with nursing her cousin, Jesse James, back to health after he suffers a near-fatal wound. During Jesse's long convalenscence, the couple falls in love, but Jesse's resentment against the Federals runs deep. He has scores to settle. For him, the war will never be over. Zee is torn between deferring to her familyl's wishes or accepting the hard realities of life with an outlaw--living under an assumed name and forever on the run. For her, the choices she makes mean the war is only beginning.

"I never meant to fall in love with Jesse James, but I might as well have tried to stop a tornado or a prairie fire. The summer that sealed our fate, when we saw each other with new eyes and our love began to grow, Jesse was all heat and light, and I was tinder waiting for a match." Zee Mimms was just nineteen in 1864-the daughter of a stern Methodist minister in Missouri-when she fell in love with the handsome, dashing, and already notorious Jesse. He was barely more than a teenager himself, yet had ridden with William Quantrill's raiders during the Civil War. "You'll marry a handsome young man," a palm reader had told her. "A man who will make you the envy of many. But . . . there will be hard times." Zee and Jesse's marriage proved the palmist right. Jesse was a dangerous puzzle: a loving husband and father who kept his "work" separate from his family, though Zee heard the lurid rumors of his career as a bank robber and worse. Still, she never gave up on him. And he earned her love, time and again. Cindi Myers is the author of more than forty novels, both historical and contemporary. Her work has been praised for its depth of emotion and realistic characters. You can learn more about her and her work at www.CindiMyers.com or www.RomanceoftheWest.com.

In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure. "Carries the reader scrupulously through James’s violent, violent life.... When [Stiles]… calls Jesse James the ‘last rebel of the Civil War; he correctly defines the theme that ruled Jesse’s life." —Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove via The New Republic Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly divided Missouri, at age sixteen James became a bushwhacker, one of the savage Confederate guerrillas that terrorized the border states. After the end of the war, James continued his campaign of robbery and murder into the brutal era of reconstruction, when his reckless daring, his partisan pronouncements, and his alliance with the sympathetic editor John Newman Edwards placed him squarely at the forefront of the former Confederates’ bid to recapture political power. With meticulous research and vivid accounts of the dramatic adventures of the famous gunman, T. J. Stiles shows how he resembles not the apolitical hero of legend, but rather a figure ready to use violence to command attention for a political cause—in many ways, a forerunner of the modern terrorist.

The New York Times bestselling self-portrait of a flawed but determined Jesse James: rebel, outlaw, gearhead, artist, entrepreneur, lost son, and fiercely committed father. Jesse James is everything you imagined him to be—and more than you ever expected. He has led a violent life. He’s survived lower depths, faced harder times, and beaten down more private demons than most—and lived to tell his story with honesty, introspection, and humility. He’s tough as nails and riding hard through life, with plenty of wisdom to share about taking a hit and coming back up. In American Outlaw, Jesse reveals all: from his volatile upbringing and troubled relationship with his father to his wild days of car thieving and juvenile detention; from knocking heads as a rock ’n’ roll bodyguard to his destructive drinking and barroom brawling; from building an empire from the ground up to marriages marked with both happiness and gut-wrenching pain; from living inside the hottest level of paparazzi hell to rehab and making peace with his past.

"Jesse James," said Carl Sandburg, "is the only American bandit who is classical, who is to this country what Robin Hood or Dick Turpin is to England, whose exploits are so close to the mythical and apocryphal." For this definitive study no significant source of information concerning Jesse James and his brother Frank has been neglected, and from it emerges resolution of the debated point: "Were the Jameses common criminals or gallant Robin Hoods?"

There is no western outlaw more infamous and notorious than Jesse James. A Confederate guerilla during the Civil War, he and his brother, as the leaders of numerous gangs of the Wild West, turned to a life of crime and robbery that lasted more than a decade. James’s life has been the subject of hundreds of books, films, and television shows, but none more vividly captures the actual life story of the legendary criminal than Frank Triplett’s definitive biography. The author, then an unknown writer, penned the book in just seven weeks, immediately following James’s assassination. Accompanying the book’s publication was a letter of authorization signed by James’s wife and mother, attesting to the authenticity of the book. Reproduced from one of the rare first editions published, Jesse James is printed complete with dozens of original plate illustrations. An important document for historians, and a hell of a wild story, detailing every one of the robberies and acts of violence James and his gang perpetrated, Jesse James is an essential piece of Western literature. From the Civil War to the infamous circumstances surrounding his death, James is an iconic American figure and a fascinating character.

Jesse James is Dead! On April 3, 1882, a bullet fired by Bob Ford from a Smith & Wesson .44 revolver ended the life of Jesse James, notorious badman. Since then, the James story has grown into a full-blown American legend. Here is the dramatic, day-by-day account of the gunman’s lawless adventures—which to some held the bravura of a Robin Hood and to others were wanton banditry—right up to the blood-curdling moment when Jesse is shot down dead in his own parlor. Now, for the first time, new material—drawn from authentic letters, old newspapers, and the personal remembrances of the James family, neighbors, and friends—casts a fascinating light on the motives and deeds of the entire James gang.

The story of Jesse James is shrouded in conflict. The conflict of the American Civil War and the conflict between those who saw a folk hero and those who saw a ruthless killer. This new collection brings together three classic biographies of the most infamous outlaw of the west.

True histories of western outlaws Jesse James and Butch Cassidy are paired in the classic Desperate Men. James D. Horan, the first researcher to be granted access to the long-sealed files of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, was able to show in graphic and unsentimental detail the bloody desperation of the James-Younger gang and the Wild Bunch. Horan reveals the insecure, bitter Jesse James behind the bandit’s mask. His death ended a sixteen-year reign of terror in the Middle Border, but farther to the west Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and their cohorts soon loomed on the outlaw trail. Their criminal careers and intimate lives are tracked in this revised, enlarged edition of Desperate Men.

Self-taught artist Rose O'Neill leaves the Midwest for New York in 1893, determined to become an illustrator in a field dominated by males. Mindful of her duty to the impoverished family she left behind, Rose’s obligations require her to yield to the men who hold the reins of her career. Yet despite the obstacles facing her, she excels at her craft, eventually designing a new character, the Kewpie. Her creation explodes into a phenomenon, but Rose’s disenchantment with the status quo fosters new ambitions. She must decide whether to remain within the boundaries dictated for her, or risk everything she’s gained to pursue the creative and personal passions that ignite her soul. The Rose of Washington Square is the story of a remarkable artist, writer, suffragist, and philanthropist whose talents lifted her from obscurity into one of the most famous and influential women of her era.