"With the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848, fortune-seekers from around the globe descended on California, among them a sprinkling of enterprising women. Author Sherry Monahan explains, ""Living in the wild American West provided women with equal opportunity - for both success and failure. Conventional wisdom suggests that women became prostitutes only because they were desperate. . . In fact, many of the women were smart entrepreneurs and saw a way to acquire fast and, in several cases, vast wealth. Rich in details combed from historical archives, California Madams uncovers the enigmatic and salacious lives of twenty-four women who ran houses of ill repute in the Golden State from the 1840's to the 1940's. Here are the hedonistic and sometimes heroic exploits of Margaret Appel, Diamond Jessie, Hattie Wells, Ah Toy, and Lee Francis, but also the unsung sagas of Emily Edwards, Cora Lee, Sylvia Daniels, May Ellis, Alma, Jewett, and many more."

Madam Suzanne is a true journey from humble beginnings, to her role as the mastermind behind the most successful and upscale brothels in Las Vegas, Orange county, and the country. Follow Madam Suzanne behind the scenes, as she reveals the secrets behind the inner workings of OC FUN, an upscale escort agency which operated out of twelve brothels, with a collection of 8,600 VIP clients, and thousands of classy, beautiful, and sexy women. Discover the reasons why ordinary women choose to become high paid escorts, and why men pay an exuberant amount of money to enjoy their intimate relationship, and companionship. Watch Madam Suzanne as she skillfully navigates through the complicated relationships between the escorts, who offer their bodies as a high demand commodity, and the clients who shamelessly use them. After 30 years in the business, Madam Suzanne evaluates the balance between law enforcement need to combat prostitution, and the logistics behind legalization in the U.S. Prepare to be shocked when Madam Suzanne finally reveals her true Identity.

Secrets of a Hollywood Super Madam is a book about my 13 years owning and operating an Escort Empire that serviced the sexual secrets of the rich and famous. I wrote this book to tell my fascinating story and answer the three questions I get asked the most: How did you get started as a Madam? Where did you find the girls? What was it like in prison? I could have "cleaned it up" and "been discreet", but I wanted to tell you my whole story and, quite frankly, why shouldn't I? There simply was no "safe way" to write my story. It was gritty, nasty, salacious, sexy, frightening, horrifying, dangerous, deadly, and above all, deliciously decadent. This book is a true testament of my life, my secrets and my ability to survive.

From the time of the gold rush to the election of the first woman to the U.S. Congress, Wanton West brings to life the women of the West's wildest region: Montana, famous for its lawlessness, boomtowns, and America's largest red-light districts. Prostitutes and entrepreneurs--like Chicago Joe, Madame Mustache, and Highkicker—flocked to Montana to make their own money, gamble, drink, and raise hell just like men. Moralists wrote them off as “soiled doves,” yet a surprising number prospered, flaunting their freedom and banking ten times more than their “respectable” sisters. A lively read providing new insights into women's struggle for equality, Wanton West is a refreshingly objective exploration of a freewheeling society and a re-creation of an unforgettable era in history.

A brilliantly imaginative, illustrated recreation of an 1890s Los Angeles pocket guide, or "Sporting Guide," to the brothels of the day. Los Angeles, 1897, When Vice Ruled The City Long before the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles was a city where dreamers from all over the world came to make their fortunes—where a madam named Pearl Morton entertained the most powerful politicians and entrepreneurs inside her namesake brothel. In a series of haunting, interlinked stories set in the period, author and filmmaker Liz Goldwyn re-creates a “sporting guide”—a secret diary and guidebook of the best brothels and prostitutes in the city. In this world a hushed conversation inside a velvet-lined boudoir could destroy a man, and the rustle of bushes might reveal a sordid assignation. Based on original research in the libraries and archives of Los Angeles, these fictional stories are often inspired by real historical characters—like the laudanum-addicted Cora Phillips, whose tombstone Goldwyn rediscovered, or Bartolo Ballerino, Italian immigrant slumlord of the forgotten red-light district, or thirteen-year-old Frances dreaming of life beyond the Children’s Orphan Asylum. Interspersed in these stories—and featuring over a hundred historical photos and illustrations—Goldwyn reveals the history of the period, from the rage for corsets to crushed pearl powder cosmetics and the awful cures for syphilis. Sporting Guide evokes a lost world of those on the margins of Los Angeles, of the hustlers who made it into one of the great cities of the world, and Goldwyn gives a poignant voice to the people and stories forgotten by time.

1987 American Book Award Winner A A A This ambitious and enchanting novel is both modern-day epic and a work of great emotional and spiritual death. Bold in its historical scope, rich in colorful settings, and eminently readable, Confessions of Madame Psyche also reaches inward, toward quieter truths. A A A The novel is narrated by Mei0li Murrow, born in San Francisco in 1895, the illegitimate daughter of a charismatic confidence man and the Chinese prostitute he has "rescued" from the streets. After her mother's early death, Mei-li is left to care of her mercenary half-sister Erika. When the young Mei-li, by pure coincidence, predicts the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Erika contructs her identity as "Madame Psyche"-exploiting Mei'li's exoticism and her clients' yearnings for contact with the dead in a series of ingeniously orchestrated seances that win her renown as a medium in California and then in the death-soaked Europe of the First World War. A A A Ironically, it is when she manages to finally reject the popular "spirituality" that has made her famous that Mei-li experiences a truer spiritual vision: One day, while walking on the beach, she has a revelation of her connection to all of life-"an experience of hidden reality which I have never doubted...and which left me permanently changed by what I then knew and know still and will always know." A A A Mei-li's subsequent journey leads her through the aspirations and disappointments of a utopian commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the 1920s; to the poverty of migrant work camps in the Depression-era Salinas Valley; and to the courage of the first strikes on San Jose's cannery row. Finally, when the relentless Erika cheats her out of an inheritance by having her committed to the Napa State Hospital, Mee-li finds her greatest wisdom and peace among the outcasts of the asylum-and there writes her "confessions." A A A Mei'li's story is ensconed in the rich history of Northern California in the first half of the twentieth century, and peopled by comrades of many classes and cultures and lovers both male and female; but her central odyssey remains one of inner discovery. In Confessions of Madame Psyche, Dorothy Bryant has created a character who is so honest in her search for truth, growth, and spiritual understanding that this quest becomes inherent to her survival.