“Sasson's candid, straightforward account...gives readers a glimpse of the cruelty and hardship endured by generations of Iraqis.”—Publishers Weekly A member of one of the most distinguished and honored families in Iraq, Mayada grew up surrounded by wealth and royalty. But when Saddam Hussein’s regime took power, she was thrown into cell 52 in the infamous Baladiyat prison with seventeen other nameless, faceless women from all walks of life. To ease their suffering, these “shadow women” passed each day by sharing their life stories. Now, through Jean Sasson, Mayada is finally able to tell her story—and theirs—to the world.

It all begins with an ad in the newspaper. When Jean Sasson, a young Southern woman living in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, answers a call to work in the royal hospital in Saudi Arabia, what should have been a two-year stay turns into a life-changing adventure spanning over a decade. Over the years Jean is plunged into the hidden lives of the veiled women in Riyadh, where women are locked in luxurious homes and fundamentalist mutawas terrorize the streets. Jean meets women from all walks of life--a feisty bedouin, an educated mother, a conservative wife of a high-ranking Saudi, and a Saudi princess the world knows as Princess Sultana--all who open a window into Saudi culture and help to reshape Jean's worldviews ... the first installment in a heartfelt, inspiring memoir about Jean's thirty-year travels and adventures in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq.

Bestselling author Jean Sasson tells the dramatic true story of a young woman caught up in Saddam Hussein's genocide of the Kurdish people of Iraq. One morning Joanna, a young bride living in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq, was surprised to see dead birds drop silently out of the clear sky. They were followed by sinister canisters falling to the ground, bringing fear and death. It was 1987, and Saddam Hussein had ordered his cousin 'Chemical Ali' to bombard Joanna's village, Bergalou, with chemical weapons. Temporarily blinded in the attack, Joanna was rescued by her husband, a Kurdish freedom fighter. After being caught in another bombardment and left for dead in the rubble, they managed to flee over the mountains in a harrowing escape. Now living in the UK and working for British Airways, Joanna has told the story of her eventful life to Jean Sasson, the bestselling chronicler of oppressed women's lives in the Princess trilogy and Mayada. Love in a Torn Land is published while the world watches the trial of the notorious 'Chemical Ali', Saddam Hussein's most bloodthirsty henchman, for crimes including the genocide of the Kurdish people.

Yasmeena was an innocent abroad. She was a college educated, English-speaking flight attendant graced with an unusual amount of confidence and sophistication. She was also a virgin and a conservative Muslim daughter and sister. When Yasmeena's flight out of Kuwait was delayed, it was because Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait. Iraqi soldiers threw her into a woman's prison where the guards committed ghastly sexual attacks and tortured the women in excruciating ways.

Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law provides a penetrating, unusually intimate look into Saudi society and the bin Laden family's role within it, as well as the treatment of Saudi women. On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her family would never be the same again. Carmen bin Ladin, half Swiss and half Persian, married into and later divorced from the bin Laden family and found herself inside a complex and vast clan, part of a society that she neither knew nor understood. Her story takes us inside the bin Laden family and one of the most powerful, secretive, and repressed kingdoms in the world.

As the western world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden has fought to keep his personal life a mystery – loyalty and fear keeping those who know him from speaking out – until now. For the first time, two of Osama’s closest family members, his first wife Najwa and their fourth son Omar, go behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the character and life of a man feared and revered around the globe. In gripping detail, they recount the drama, tensions, and everyday activities of the man they knew as a husband and father. Married at fifteen, Najwa describes the transformation of the quiet, serious young man she fell in love with into an authoritarian husband and stern father, an entrepreneur, and – finally – the leader of a complex international terrorist network. Uprooted from a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege in Saudi Arabia, they suddenly found themselves living life on the run, fleeing from country to country under assumed names and fake passports. Omar describes how he and his siblings were brought up in remote ranches and fortified Afghani mountain camps, handling Kalashnikovs and learning desert survival skills. Their eventual escape from Afghanistan would come just days before the terrible events of 9/11 changed the world forever. With unprecedented access and exclusive family photographs, Jean Sasson, author of the bestselling Princess, presents the story that we were never meant to hear.

This book paints a horrifying reality for women of the desert kingdom. It is a haunting look at the danger of Saudi male dominance and the desperate lives of the women they rule.