Fascinating Books About Cults

Jerry Walker shares his story of growing up with blind, African American parents in a segregated cult preaching the imminent end of the world.

At the prestigious Edwards University, Phoebe Lin is lured into a religious cult by a former student with a dubious past and violent plans. Still reeling from her mother’s death—and secretly blaming herself for it—Phoebe follows along willingly. Meanwhile, the boy who’s in love with her, Will Kendall, knows intimately how easy it is to be manipulated, and he struggles to reach out to Phoebe before it’s too late.

In this work of fiction, Evie is captivated by Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.

Set 400 years in the future under a totalitarian government, Salvation Day is helmed by Zahra, the leader of a cultish faction. The group is on a mission to reclaim House of Wisdom, a space-exploration vessel abandoned a decade earlier after a virus killed everyone on board. But the group gets far more than they came for when they discover humanity-threatening secrets that the entire global government has been covering up—and it’s about to all come crashing down.

Rebecca Stott tries to make sense of her childhood in the cult Exclusive Brethren and to understand her father’s role in the cult.

Dazzlingly original and darkly funny, Heartbreaker is narrated by 15-year-old Pony Darlene Fontaine, a killer dog, and a boy named Supernatural, in the aftermath of Pony’s mom’s disappearance. It’s 1985, and Pony lives in “the territory,” where her mother showed up 17 years ago and was taken in—the only outsider ever to join. But now Billie Jean has snuck off in the dark of night, and Pony is left to figure out what it all means.

Daniel Barban Levin was one of the original residents of Slonim Woods 9. Beginning the moment Daniel set foot on Sarah Lawrence’s idyllic campus and spanning the two years he spent in the grip of a megalomaniac, this brave, lyrical, and redemptive memoir reveals how a group of friends was led from college to a cult without the world even noticing.

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. She is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort — a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other “Bunny,” and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled “Smut Salon.” Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

In 1974, Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst Family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbonese Liberation Army.

When Daisy Dawson is attacked by a serial killer, she manages not only to get away, but to grab the necklace around the killer’s neck. Special Agent Gideon Reynolds recognizes the necklace: it’s from the cult his mother helped him escape from when he was a teenager—the cult that took his mother’s life, and many others. An edge-of-your-seat thriller with heart-stopping stakes.

Carolyn Jessop manages a daring escape from a brutal environment and became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

FBI consultant Jack Lancaster is supposed to believe that Quinton Zane—the cult leader he grew up under until a tragic night that left Jack orphaned—is long dead, but he knows better. Quinton is back, and he wants to finish what he started. Moody, full of psychological suspense, and with a satisfying romantic plot starring Jack’s meditation therapist, Untouchable is all sorts of bingeworthy.

In this haunting and riveting firsthand account, a high-level member of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple for seven years, Deborah Layton, escaped his infamous commune in the Guyanese jungle, leaving behind her mother, her older brother, and many friends.

Sam hasn’t spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.

Held for questioning by the police, Clara Lawson is forced to examine every facet of her life as she slowly comes to terms with the truth behind her upbringing and her beloved husband’s secretive business. Told through a split narrative of “Then” and “Now,” the unraveling of Clara’s life is a psychological thriller you won’t want to miss.

This extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities, where some 40,000 people still practice polygamy.

The title of Arthur Goldwag’s anthology says it all: this book is perfect for readers looking to learn about a breadth of cults, conspiracies, and secret societies across history, including the Freemasons, the mafia, the Kennedy assassination, and—of course—the Illuminati.

In this colorful, eye-opening memoir, Jayanti Tamm offers an unforgettable glimpse into the hidden world of growing up “cult” in mainstream America.

Seventeen-year-old Minnow is imprisoned in a juvenile detention center for a crime she committed after her escape from the tyrannical Kevinian cult, at whose authority she lost everything—including her own hands. In this dark work of fiction, Minnow must be willing to admit what she knows about the cult’s demise in order to reclaim her life.

In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face once they have been expelled by the sect.

Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers the inner workings of Scientology.

In this novel, a young couple decides to join an exclusive and mysterious group known only as The Pact. The young lovers are about to discover that The Pact will go to any lengths to enforce their rules.

On a private island off the coast of Maine, Wisewood’s guests commit to six-month stays. During this time, they’re prohibited from contact with the rest of the world to keep guests focused on achieving true fearlessness so they can become their Maximized Selves. Natalie thinks it’s a bad idea, but Kit has had enough of her sister’s cynicism and voluntarily disappears off the grid. Six months later Natalie receives a menacing e-mail from a Wisewood account threatening to reveal the secret she’s been keeping from Kit. She’s about to learn that Wisewood won’t let either of them go without a fight.

Delving into the latest research of psychologists and neuroscientists, How Minds Change explores the limits of reasoning, the power of groupthink, and the effects of deep canvassing. Told with McRaney’s trademark sense of humor, compassion, and scientific curiosity, it’s an eye-opening journey among cult members, conspiracy theorists, and political activists, from Westboro Baptist Church picketers to LGBTQ campaigners in California—that ultimately challenges us to question our own motives and beliefs. In an age of dangerous conspiratorial thinking, can we rise to the occasion with empathy?