Religious Cults

The pandemic has receded and life in the United States has returned to normal—or that’s what the government insists. So what is causing residents in a remote religious compound in Idaho to drop dead in a grisly fashion? And why are prominent virologists meeting with untimely ends? Something—or someone—is killing the religious followers and scientists, and Newshound reporter Nik Byron is determined to find out what’s behind the deaths. Could Xion Labs’ top-secret vaccine program be connected? Nik suspects so, but he’s being stonewalled at every turn. As he inches closer to the ...

Cassie True dreams of the day she can resume her music career. Only one thing stands in her way, a court-ordered rehab program sponsored by a religious cult determined to steal her soul. Singer/songwriter Cassie True enters a rehab program that promises to change her life. And it does…in ways she never expected. Caught in a religious cult’s ever-constricting web, she fights not only for her sanity but for the freedom to form real friendships. She longs to put alcoholism behind her, finish the program and return to her career. But when her friend is forcibly separated from her husband by...

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.

Why would anyone join a cult? Maybe they're unhappy with their current religion, or they want to change the world, or they're disappointed with their lives and want to find something bigger or holier that makes sense of this confusing, chaotic and dangerous world. Or maybe they just want to give themselves the best possible chance of having sex with aliens. Whatever the reason, once people are in, it's usually very difficult for them to leave.

After seven years of faithfully following her spiritual teacher, Renee Linnell finally realized she was in a cult and had been severely brainwashed. But how did that happen to someone like her? She had graduated magna cum laude with a double degree. She had started five different companies and had an MBA from NYU. The Burn Zone is an exploration of how we give up our power - how what started out as a need to heal from the loss of her parents and to understand the big questions in life could leave a young woman fighting for her sanity and her sense of self.

Randall Balmer's Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is an insightful and engaging journey into the world of conservative Christians in America. Originally published 25 years ago and the basis for an award-winning PBS documentary, this timely new edition arrives just as recent elections have left an ever-growing number of secular Americans wondering exactly how the other half thinks.

An Everyday Cult follows the arc of Buglion's journey through young motherhood into a group that welcomed her but also captured her mind, her heart, and her money. She shows us how a mind and psyche can be compromised by a controlling leader, using techniques that fly under the radar of human awareness—and she implores listeners to wake up to these ever-present abuses of power. Gerette vividly describes a personal journey that became increasingly treacherous, culminating in tragedy. In the telling of her story, she exposes the impact of cultic manipulation on daily life.

I am Lex Gracie: but they call me Girl A. I grew up with my family on the moors. I escaped when I was 15 years old. Now something is pulling me back....

Peter Macdonald Blachly takes us on an amazing adventure, documenting the 17 years he spent in a spiritual cult, while providing candid insights into the circumstances and conditions that made him vulnerable to manipulation by a charismatic sociopath. His understanding of psychology and human weaknesses, and the lessons he draws from his own experiences are universal, making his memoir highly relevant today. The book provides a riveting account of Blachly’s introduction to yoga, his arranged marriage, and a thrilling and entertaining view of India during the 1970s and 1980s.

In Wyoming for a medical conference, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles joins a group of friends on a spur-of-the-moment ski trip. Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow.

This audiobook compares Christianity with the false religions of the world today that are based on the accuracy of fulfilled Bible prophecy. No other religion has used prophecy fulfilled in our lifetime to prove its authority, except the Bible. With more than 50 prophecies fulfilled since AD 1948 and Jesus’ teaching that he is the only way to salvation, we can conclude that we must be a Christian to gain eternal life. Jesus declares you must follow his teachings in order to obtain eternal life.

It's rarely obvious when a group is a cult. Most cults don't advertise themselves as such: They are groups of people who look and act just like you and me. Not dangerous. Not deranged. At least, not at first. In this award-winning memoir, Alexandra Amor shines a light on cults so that others might learn from her heartbreaking experience. Amor gracefully and sensitively explains how ordinary and intelligent people get seduced into joining cults, why they stay despite the emotional and psychological abuse, and what the long process of recovery looks like once someone leaves a cult.

Rebecca Stott both adored and feared her father, Roger Stott, a high-ranking minister in the Brighton, England, branch of the Exclusive Brethren, a separatist fundamentalist Christian sect. A man of contradictions, he preached that the Brethren should shun the outside world, which was ruled by Satan, yet he kept a radio in the trunk of his car and read Shakespeare and Yeats.

You joined your church because of its intensity for God. Like no other place, it’s helped you discover the meaning of obedience. If there’s one problem, it’s the confusion that sometimes comes from your own carnal thinking. But God has given you leaders who can lovingly correct a doubting, independent spirit and help you choose God’s best for your life. How can you go wrong with a church like that? Easily, because it fits the profile of many abusive churches.

After a five-year cultic misadventure in a secret "school," Friedman wrote her cautionary tale. Memoir led to research on narcissistic abuse and a recovery template for empaths. With humor and compassion, Friedman describes how the cult exploited her empathy. She interviews former members from other cults and includes research from leading experts. We learn that all cults and cons market false hope by leveraging human nature to profit from the vulnerable.

Raised by powerful women in a restrictive, sheltered Christian community in New England, Ryan Dostie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in high school changes the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly has to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and has been holding her own until the unthinkable happens: she is raped by a fellow soldier. Struggling with PTSD and commanders who don't trust her story, Dostie finds herself....

Cult of the Great Eleven is a true account of one of the 20th century’s weirdest and most mysterious cults. Human and animal sacrifices, vanishings, the preserved corpse of a teenage cult princess, angelic encounters, a woman cooked in an oven, a mother chained to her bed for two months, resurrection experiments, refrigeration warehouses for the dead, abductions, nocturnal rituals, orgies, a breathing universe, an esoteric tome known as "The Great Sixth Seal", hints of Hecate worship, and a post-apocalyptic world ruled by 11 queens from a hill in Hollywood.

Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered unacceptable: celebrating birthdays and holidays, voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him. But even years after whispers of his sexual orientation reached his congregation’s presiding elder, catalyzing his disassociation, the distinction between “in” and “out” isn’t always clear.

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.

What happens when a prophet dies and forgets to leave a forwarding address? After the Prophet Fell is a blistering, unapologetic, and darkly hilarious dive into the holy mess that followed the death of Joseph Smith—the founder of the Mormon Church, self-declared prophet, and the man who left behind a movement with no plan, no instructions, and way too many people claiming to be his successor. Told with biting wit and backed by historical receipts, this book pulls back the sacramental curtain to expose the succession crisis that tore the Latter-day Saints apart. From Brigham Young’s ...