Sally Denton Books in Order

Drew Thornton's death while parachuting with cocaine exposes a network linking Kentucky privilege, drug trafficking, and official corruption. Sally Denton follows state policeman Ralph Ross's investigation into the powerful people and institutions surrounding the smuggling operation known as the Company.

Sally Denton and Roger Morris investigate the forces that built Las Vegas and extended its influence across America. Their account connects gambling, organized crime, political power, finance, and intelligence operations, examining how the city's development reflects broader patterns of corruption and ambition.

Sally Denton investigates the 1857 killing of emigrants at Mountain Meadows in Utah. Examining contemporary documents and Mormon political history, she challenges earlier explanations and argues that church leaders bore responsibility for the massacre and the efforts to conceal it.

Using her ancestor Jean Rio's diary, Sally Denton reconstructs an English widow's journey to Mormon Utah in the 1850s. Religious hope gives way to disillusionment with frontier hardship, polygamy, and violence, leading Rio toward another search for freedom in California.

John and Jessie Fremont combined exploration, political ambition, and opposition to slavery in nineteenth-century America. Sally Denton follows their marriage and careers, examining how family conflict and powerful rivals shaped a partnership influential in the country's westward expansion and political transformation.

Sally Denton follows Helen Gahagan Douglas from Broadway and opera to Congress and a Senate campaign against Richard Nixon. The biography examines her progressive causes, political relationships, and the anti-communist attacks that ended her electoral career while leaving a lasting influence.

Sally Denton examines the opposition confronting Franklin Roosevelt as he entered office amid the Great Depression. Assassination threats, populist challengers, and an alleged plan for a coup frame her account of political extremism and resistance to the New Deal.

Sally Denton traces five generations of the Bechtel family and the growth of their construction empire from the Hoover Dam to global infrastructure projects. The company's secrecy and close government relationships reveal intersections among private wealth, natural resources, and political power.

The 2019 murder of Mormon women and children in northern Mexico leads Sally Denton into the history of an isolated polygamist colony. Investigating competing explanations for the attack, she also examines religious power, internal violence, and the women sustaining the community.