Reviews for Voices from the Harem If you are the parent of a teenage girl, you should put this book on your must-read list. It is a fascinating but extremely disturbing collection of anecdotes from girls who describe how they wound up in a slave harem. One reviewer said that there was "too much fantasy," but I think she completely missed the point. A number of girls have gone insane and have retreated into fantasy worlds where they feel safe, because they could no longer deal with their real lives locked away forever in a harem. -Carmen F. This was an unexpected treat, because I wasn't sure about what I was getting into. All 111 girls in Prince Ibrahim's Il Giardino Posteriore harem tell their own stories of how they wound up in the harem and what they think about it. Some of them tell really spooky stories about where they had been before, like the girl who used to belong to a guy who flunked out of medical school but bought slaves so he could operate on people anyway. Of course, most of them died, but he got to indulge his desire. Or the one who had been in a mad scientist's laboratory and he would run bizarre experiments on the unfortunate victims there. Touching, moving, heart-breaking stories. - Marie C. This is an excellent book describing the dreary, unrewarding life of Harem Slaves. Their personal stories of how the got there is both riveting and also horrifying. At times it left me shaking my head in bewilderment when some of these women described their feelings towards their en-slaver. A fascinating read even on it's own. -Flavius J. Horribly heartrending. - Jamie R. I cannot believe this still goes on to this day. Gripping, unbelievable but most of all heart breaking. I wish there was more being done to combat this. -Natalie S. Some of the women in the harem are ones that were also ones who were killed at the Rodeo in horrible ways. Some girls were killed after only being in the harem a few months for "poor performance" because they had trouble adjusting to having been kidnapped from their families and country. Prince Ibrahim killed a girl a month, just because he could. Some of the women had gone quietly insane after years of being cooped up in a pretty cage with no way out. -Karbie

In the Western imagination, the Middle Eastern harem was a place of sex, debauchery, slavery, miscegenation, power, riches, and sheer abandon. But for the women and children who actually inhabited this realm of the imperial palace, the reality was vastly different. In this collection of translated memoirs, three women who lived in the Ottoman imperial harem in Istanbul between 1876 and 1924 offer a fascinating glimpse "behind the veil" into the lives of Muslim palace women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The memoirists are Filizten, concubine to Sultan Murad V; Princess Ayse, daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid II; and Safiye, a schoolteacher who instructed the grandchildren and harem ladies of Sultan Mehmed V. Their recollections of the Ottoman harem reveal the rigid protocol and hierarchy that governed the lives of the imperial family and concubines, as well as the hundreds of slave women and black eunuchs in service to them. The memoirists show that, far from being a place of debauchery, the harem was a family home in which polite and refined behavior prevailed. Douglas Brookes explains the social structure of the nineteenth-century Ottoman palace harem in his introduction. These three memoirs, written across a half century and by women of differing social classes, offer a fuller and richer portrait of the Ottoman imperial harem than has ever before been available in English.

Lord Demir has spent his life trying to appease a brutal, selfish king, and keep the concubines under his care alive—and now he is on the verge of losing everything. The council wants to abolish the harems, there are no heirs to the throne, and the foreigners control the Steward. One wrong move will tip tensions into civil war. Crown Prince Ihsan returns to find his home in turmoil, and the royal court so full of vipers it's impossible to say which of them will strike first. Removing his father from the throne, one way or another, should be a simple matter. Staying alive and proving himself a worthy king will be far more difficult. Crown Princess Euren has spent the last five years in hiding so that she could not be used against her father or Ihsan. But she is the daughter of a soldier, never meant to wear a crown, never trained to fight battles where words are the weapon of choice. If she hopes to keep herself and her loved ones alive, she'll have to learn fast.

Cyra, a rare Omega phoenix shifter, has been hiding from the shifter world for years, but she’s about to be dragged back into it in a big way. Cyra feels that she’s pretty good at pretending that she’s human, she’s got a job at a cafe and is a princess for hire for birthday parties for kids. Money is always tight, but she likes her freedom and that’s worth a lot to her. Rare Omegas like her are never truly safe. Either because her parents keep trying to marry her off to some rich Alpha for the money and status it would bring them, or the constant danger of being found out, kidnapped and bred by some random shifter family hoping to gain status from that. Once she’s claimed by an Alpha, she’ll become the Alpha’s property, and she refuses to live like that. But those situations become real possibilities when Cyra finds herself at the start of the shifter mating season with an old car that constantly breaks down and her stash of medication that she uses to hide her Omega status running dangerously low, and no money to afford to do something about either problem. Her problems get even worse when two playboy Alphas, a hydra and a griffin, start showing up at the cafe. Their teasing and interest making her feel things and want things she’s sworn to never do with another shifter, for the risk of what could happen is too great for the short enjoyment it would bring. But the final straw is when she accidentally accepts to play a princess at a shifter kid’s birthday party and her car breaks down right as she’s about to leave. Luckily, or maybe she’s just that unlucky, two kind Alphas, a cerberus and a centaur, are able to give her a ride back home. Their kindness making her feel safe and comforted, even when it’s not safe for her at all. In a bout of recklessness and a desperate need for the money, she accepts the offer of the cerberus and centaur to be their date to the yearly Night Gala. An exclusive event at the start of the mating season where Alphas, Betas and Omegas can meet, but it’s not uncommon for humans to attend too, as ‘dates’ or staff. One night of looking pretty and eating fancy food and she’d be able to not only fix her car but afford the medication she needs, the offer is too tempting. What she hadn’t expected was for the hydra and the griffin to show up too. Or how all four Alphas would react to her Omega scent. Or how the media would hound them through the city as the five are trying to figure out what’s going on. Or, worst of all, how her parents would use this opportunity to get the fame they’ve always wanted by claiming that the four Alphas have kidnapped Cyra and that she’s already promised to another Alpha. Now the five not only have to figure out their feelings, but are also on the run from the media, the police and anyone interested in getting their hands on a rare Omega, no matter the cost… This collection contains all four books in the Her Shifter Harem’s Babies series, Omega Phoenix: Claimed, Omega Phoenix: Hunted, Omega Phoenix: Pursued and Omega Phoenix: Provoked. This is a paranormal Omegaverse reverse harem #WhyChoose romance. These books may include any of these elements: steamy scenes, ‘I need tissues NOW’ moments, cries of ‘why, oh, why’ and cliffhangers that make you bite your nails (and curse the author). This series contains MF, MM and group scenes.