This true story of a concubine and the Gold Rush years “delves deep into the soul of the real old west” (Erik Larson). “Once the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill launched our ‘national madness,’ the population of California exploded. Tens of thousands of Chinese, lured by tales of a ‘golden mountain,’ took passage across the Pacific. Among this massive influx were many young concubines who were expected to serve in the brothels sprouting up near the goldfields. One of them adopted the name of Polly Bemis, after an Idaho saloonkeeper, Charlie Bemis, won her in a poker game and married her. For decades the couple lived on an isolated, self-sufficient farm near the Salmon River in central Idaho. After her husband’s death, Polly came down to a nearby town and gradually spoke of her experiences. Journalist Christopher Corbett movingly recounts Polly’s story, integrating Polly’s personal history into the broader picture of the history of the mass immigration of Chinese. As both a personal and social history, this is an admirable book.” —Booklist “A gorgeously written and brilliantly researched saga of America during the mad flush of its biggest Gold Rush. Christopher Corbett’s genius is to anchor his larger story of Chinese immigration around a poor concubine named Polly. A tremendous achievement.” —Douglas Brinkley “Uses Bemis’s story as a platform for a larger discussion about the hardships of the Chinese experience in the American West.” —The Washington Post

THE RUNAWAY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “The Bride Stripped Bare shows us the inside–out of marriage, infidelity, obsession and taxi drivers (I may never take a cab ride in London again). . . . Few books can be both dark and light. This one dances on the edge, and sometimes crosses it, with much satisfaction to be had on either side.”— Valerie Frankel, author of The Accidental Virgin An explosive novel of sex, secrecy, and escape. A woman disappears. Her car lies abandoned on a remote bluff; no body is found. Known by her family and friends as quiet and self-contained, she has left behind an incendiary diary chronicling a disturbing journey of sexual awakening. The diary opens on her honeymoon in Morocco: she believes herself to be happy—or happy enough, anyway. Swiftly, this security masquerading as love fractures in an act of massive betrayal, only to propel her into a world of desire and fantasy and recklessness. In need of guidance, she finds an unlikely heroine in the anonymous author of a dusty, rare manuscript. Written by a woman in the 1600s, it is a cry from the heart for women to live and love freely. Emboldened, she allows herself to discover the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, how long can her soul sustain a perilous double life? Coolly impassioned, Bride Stripped Bare tells shocking truths about love and sex. Couched in a deceptively simple style, its gorgeous, incantatory rhythms will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.

After years of wandering, Daisy Johnson hopes to settle in Turnabout, Texas, open a restaurant, perhaps find a husband. Of course, she'd envisioned a man who actually likes her. Not someone who offers a marriage of convenience to avoid scandal. Turnabout is just a temporary stop for newspaper reporter Everett Fulton. Thanks to one pesky connecting door and a local gossip, he's suddenly married, but his dreams of leaving haven't changed. What Daisy wants–home, family, tenderness–he can't provide. Yet big–city plans are starting to pale beside small–town warmth.

Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether. McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it. Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.

From boudoirs to brothels, historian Michael Rutter takes you into the intimate world of the Wild West's women of the night. Eighteen richly researched biographies reveal the tricks and torments of the trade, with fascinating sidebars on venereal diseases (and dire "cures"), children of prostitutes, a floating brothel, and hog ranches.

Men are usually the heroes of Western stories, but women also played a crucial role in developing the American frontier, and their stories have rarely been told. This anthology of biographical essays on women promises new insight into gender in the 19C American West. The women featured include Asian Americans, African-Americans and Native American women, as well as their white counterparts. The original essays offer observations about gender and sexual violence, the subordinate status of women of color, their perseverance and influence in changing that status, a look at the gendered religious legacy that shaped Western Catholicism, and women in the urban and rural, industrial and agricultural West.

In want of a respectable wife… Widow Jane Caldwell is practically destitute when famed explorer Nicholas Hurst seeks shelter—with his baby daughter hidden beneath his coat! Wounded and on the run from his enemies, Nicholas is as darkly attractive as she remembers and she can't deny him aid. Adventurer Nicholas seeks to settle down, and Jane would make a highly respectable wife! But, cowed by duty for too long, Jane yearns for a love and passion Nicholas cannot give her…until he learns to open his heart.

Catching the wacky spirit of "making it in Maine", we follow the adventures of Chick Devine and his collection of downeast desperados.

The saloon owner and the angel… Will Keegan is no stranger to rescuing damsels in distress. He has been using his saloon, the Silken Angel, to save Chinese girls from the ruthless San Francisco brothel owners who would enslave and exploit them. But when a beautiful, tambourine-banging missionary with big blue eyes and skin as soft as silk comes calling at his saloon, he’s the one who needs rescuing. Julia Jane Parham is on a mission of her own. Leaving behind her life as a proper English miss raised in Hong Kong, Julia has come to San Francisco to find her dearest friend Su Mi, the victim of an arranged marriage that turned out to be a cruel hoax. When she witnesses Will buying Chinese girls for his saloon, she has no choice but to believe him the worst sort of villain. But that doesn’t explain why Will is always there when she needs him. Or why she only feels safe in his strong and tender embrace. Or why one kiss from his lips can make her shiver with delight and forget she can’t afford to trust him. As their passions flare and the dangers around them deepen, Will realizes that to save both of their lives, he must win Julia’s trust…and her heart. Book 2 of the Gold Coast Brides series, which includes THE TREASURE BRIDE, THE SILK BRIDE, and THE HEIRESS BRIDE (Coming Soon) “Rebecca Hagan Lee warms my heart and touches my soul. She’s a star in the making!”—Sabrina Jeffries, New York Times bestselling author “Tender, enthralling romance straight from the heart!”—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author “Rebecca Hagan Lee taps into every woman’s fantasy!” — Christina Dodd, New York Times bestseller “Rebecca Hagan Lee is a writer on the rise!”—Romantic Times “Historical romance fans are fortunate to have a treasure like Rebecca Hagan Lee.”—Affaire de Coeur “The Treasure Bride is a tender treasure of a book!”—Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author Victorian romance, Western romance, Americana romance, San Francisco romance