Mystery Cults

An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals, and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar - the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate - and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an 18th-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

Germany is rattling its war machine at Britain. Sherlock Holmes and Watson are made special agents to stop the war machine from destroying Britain from within. A cult is rising to power in Germany. ..The Verboten Party. It is led by forces that would put terror into the hearts of people if they knew who was behind the power of the cult. And it's not Hitler, a dark, but overly ambitious soul. No, it's a nation hidden from view beneath our world. A nation of cruel giants!

A year after the turmoil in Norman, Oklahoma, Detective “Park” Parkerson is still on the trail of Merrill Thompson. Now collaborating with the FBI, he reaches out to Detective Velnette Cadell, another small-town detective, after uncovering a connection between Merrill and a psychiatrist she had been romantically involved with. Together, they stumble upon a new case reminiscent of Merrill’s cult. Detectives Parkerson and Cadell embark on a harrowing mission to uncover the truth behind a string of unsettling disappearances plaguing college campuses nationwide. As they peel back layers ...

The cult members keep to themselves, but the suspicious circumstances under which they arrived have Gabriel Du Pre questioning their motives and seeking answers. He soon learns from a friend in the FBI that seven of the cult's recently defected members were killed, each shot to death, but no arrests have been made. Then another shooting occurs at the perimeter of the ranch, and Du Pre finds himself blindly searching for a killer, an explanation for the murders, and the identity of the cult's elusive leader.

En route to a family vacation on the French Riviera, Inspector Roderick Alleyn glimpses from the train a shocking tableau. In a moonlit window, a white-robed figure raises a knife to a woman's shadow. Thus begins his incognito exploration of the Chateau of the Silver Goat... where a jet-set cult's "Way of Life" could spell death for a maiden lady of a certain age, and even for Alleyn's own young son, unless he can unveil its illicit mysteries.

During spring break, archaeology students Adam Andrews and Eva Lunes fly to the Yucatan to research Mayan pyramids, ruins, and myths. When their island guide, Enrique, offers to give them a private tour of Kukulkan’s Island, also called Snake Island, they seize the opportunity, as it has some of the most fantastic, least-seen ruins of all Mayan culture. When Eva and Adam arrive at Snake Island, they tour Kukulkan’s Pyramid and learn of the legend of the Forbidden Tree and its cursed fruit. Unfortunately, Adam and Eva also encounter a mysterious man who warns them to leave the island. ...

Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and 11 of his young charges have been held underground at the group's highly fortified compound for 46 days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets out to discover everything she can about the cult's iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai.

FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers grapples with a baffling series of murders in Detroit - and discovers a terror plot whose roots stretch back centuries. Consulting on a case, Patrick encounters the work of a killer who displays a stunning degree of ruthlessness. Patrick is shocked to find that the slayings are linked not just to his own history with a known terrorist but to a former lover as well - and that her secret past might hold the key to stopping the countless deaths.

While belief in religious supernatural claims is waning throughout the West, evidence suggests belief in nonreligious supernatural claims is on the rise. What explains this contradiction? How can a society with a falling belief in God have a rising belief in ghosts, psychic powers, ancient astronauts, and other supernatural or pseudo-scientific phenomena? Taking the same anthropological approach he employed in his notable studies of religion, atheist author and activist David G. McAfee turns his attention to nonreligious faith-based claims.

Halley James knows her marriage is over. But she’s not prepared for the rest of her life to fall apart too. She just lost her job at the forensics lab. Her dad needs emergency surgery. But the biggest blow comes back home in Marchburg, Virginia, where she discovers her mother didn’t actually die in a car crash. Her mom was murdered—and her father lied about it all these years.

FBI agents Brady Moore and Alicia Wager are accustomed to grisly crimes like the so-called Pelletier Killings. But when the pair uncovers ancient prophecies that link the victims, the wrath of the killers turns on them. Reeling from a series of attempts on their lives, they follow a scant trail of evidence that leads them to Luco Scaramuzzi, the charismatic Italian ambassador to Israel, a man of near limitless power and incalculable wealth.

Axel is hiding from the world. A killer robbed his happy marriage of its life. He has not recovered fully from the death of his wife. Now Metro of Vegas wants him back. Big time!! Can he return when the memories of his wife's death still so strong? Can he help stop a serial killer who has struck across the country? Axel is about to jump into a crime that has its roots in the darkest corners of humanity... ...THE OCCULT!

When contract killer Cooper Franklin makes a deathbed confession, his revelations upend the lives of two strangers, setting them on an intersecting and ruinous path that imperils them both. Widow and single mom Tamara Foster must reckon with the mystery of her late husband’s death and the secrets he left behind. As she digs deeper into his past to discover that she never truly knew him at all, her carefully reconstructed world begins to crumble all over again.

The Blood Spurts Series by John Alden A dark psychological thriller series that blurs the lines between pleasure and pain, truth and lies, life and legacy. Across four chilling volumes — Blood Spurts, Crimson Veil, Blood Reckoning, and the explosive finale Blood Legacy — this haunting saga unearths the cost of secrets buried in blood. What begins as a secretive university game — part dare, part confession, part ritual — spirals into a multi-generational conspiracy orchestrated by an ancient Watchers’ council. At the centre is Mike Halston, a former Royal Marine turned reluctant ...

With plans for a new performing arts center at Wynter Castle taking up all her time, baker Merry Wynter has been all but unaware of the fringe group compound near her small town - until a street preacher accosts her with taunts of doom and damnation. Worried that some of her close friends may have been lured in by the group and its charismatic leader, Merry begins digging into the ministry - and soon suspects they may have ties to the recent death of a young woman and the disappearance of many others.

Harlan Winter has returned to his corner of Appalachia, where his fiery history with a depraved cult has made him a legend. All Harlan wants is to run his occult bookshop and get on with his life—if only his unsettling visions would let him. But when a fellow devotee of the dark arts moves to Coopersville and Harlan’s coveted grimoire is stolen, he’s pulled into a world deadlier than the one that already scarred his soul.

When nearly 100 members of The Ark, a sinister apocalypse cult, are found dead by poison at their isolated community in North Wales, those left alive are scattered to the winds with few coping skills and fewer answers. For 23-year-old Romy, who has never known life outside the compound, learning how to live in a world she has been taught to fear is terrifying.

Not much can make Detective Betty Rhyzyk flinch. But when forced into therapy, a desk assignment, and domestic bliss following a terrifying run-in with an apocalyptic cult, she’s having trouble readjusting to life as it once was. At home, she struggles to connect with her loving wife, Jackie. At work, someone has been assassinating confidential informants. To make matters worse, Betty’s partner seems to be increasingly dependent on the painkillers he was prescribed for injuries he sustained narrowly rescuing her.

Ten years after a fiery raid kills her family, former cult member Sybilla “Billie” Laure has a completely new identity. She’s settled in rural Colorado with her daughter, hoping for a quieter life. But the world has other plans. With wildfires raging and birds dropping from the sky, Billie wonders if her cult leader father’s apocalyptic predictions are finally coming true. When an intruder murders her husband and kidnaps her daughter, Billie has no choice but to confront the secrets of her past.

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a Scottish evangelist and “faith healer” who migrated to the United States from Australia in the late 1800s. Dowie was referred to by critics of his time as a “confidence man”, a person who appealed to the confidence of victims using deception to convince or persuade them out of money or into submission. In the case of Dowie’s Christian Catholic Church cult following, commonly referred to as “Zionites” or “Dowieites”, both money and power were gained.