Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

A Thriller

HALCYON is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems. A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario—a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure. On the heels of tragedy, Martin Lovegrove moves his family to Halcyon. A couple of months, he tells himself, to retreat from the chaos and grind. He soon begins to suspect there is something beneath Halcyon’s perfect veneer and sets out to discover the truth—however terrible it might be—behind the island and its mysterious founder, Mother Moon.

Halcyon

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#paperback #fiction #riveting #cults #sisters #hardcover 

Ohio

A Novel

Amity and Sorrow

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Former library copy. A little wear around the edges. SKU: 31923001 #cults

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Florida

Discusses why and how religious cults begin and prosper, describes the different types, and examines in detail the events surrounding cult leaders Charles Manson and Jim Jones.

Cults

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Hampshire

"Not a typical cult novel...Despite Avery's clear trauma and struggle for closure, her voice is strong and clear." - Booklist 

"Avery's voice resonates...Powerful and moving." - New York Journal of Books

An emotionally wrought, psychologically twisty coming-of-age story perfect for book clubs about a girl who escapes from a cult after a deadly fire destroys her family's compound, only to be haunted by That Night as she tries to build a new life for herself.

A fire. Her escape. And the realization her entire life has been a lie.

When nineteen-year-old Avery awakens to flames consuming her family's remote compound, she knows it's her only chance to escape her father's grueling survival training, bizarre rules, and gruesome punishments. She and her brother Cole flee the grounds for the first time in their lives, suddenly homeless in a world they know nothing about. After months of hiding out, they are arrested for shoplifting and a shocking discovery is made, resulting in the pair being separated.

Avery is alone and desperate. She is uncertain if her "parents" survived the fire and is terrified to find out. But when the police investigation reveals there may be more survivors, Avery must uncover the truth about the fire to truly be free.

Suspenseful, emotionally charged, and deeply thought-provoking, After We Were Stolen delves into the idea of family--those we're born into and those we make--resilience, and the lengths a cult survivor will go to finally be free of her painful past. 

Praise for After We Were Stolen:

"Brooke Beyfuss's After We Were Stolenkept me feverishly turning pages, anxious and eager to find out what happened to Avery and Cole as they emerge from a life they never asked for and into one they're totally unprepared to navigate."--Melanie Abrams, author of Meadowlark

"After We Were Stolenis an intelligent and heartrending story of vulnerability, power, resistance, and redemption. An excellent read that is sure to be a favorite book club pick." --Rebecca Taylor, author of The Secret Next Door

(Signed) After We Were Stolen 

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#fiction #hardcover #chelseabieker #godshot #contemporary #cults #family #literaryfiction #religion 

Minnesota

“Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy, and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen–year–old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother–loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. “[A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women—and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."—Annabel Gutterman, Time “Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A–.”—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly

Godshot

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#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #botm #thriller #ahistoryofwildplaces #sheaernshaw #suspense #bookofthemonth #cults BOTM edition, in great shape!! 

Utah

“What a wonderful rabbit hole to fall down.” —Erika Swyler, author of Light from Other Stars and The Book of Speculation “A terrifying and timely book.” —Erica Ferencik, bestselling author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle “As spine-chilling as it is beautifully crafted.” —Ruth Emmie Lang, author of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance The New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep weaves a richly atmospheric adult debut following three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune as they investigate the disappearances of two outsiders. Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend. Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James. Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms. Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.

A History of Wild Places

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New York

Messiah

The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism

Turning East

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New Jersey

A Memoir

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** “A Gen-X This Boy’s Life...Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel... In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain of his own soul. Hollywood Park is a triumph." —O, The Oprah Magazine "This moving and profound memoir is for anyone who loves a good redemption story." —Good Morning America, 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 "Several years ago, Jollett began writing Hollywood Park, the gripping and brutally honest memoir of his life. Published in the middle of the pandemic, it has gone on to become one of the summer’s most celebrated books and a New York Times best seller..." –Los Angeles Magazine HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went. They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed. Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion. ... So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician. Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal.

Hollywood Park

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Texas

With echoes of The Virgin Suicides and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Alison Wisdom's debut novel is the story of one teenage girl's unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind. Alice Lange's neighbors are proud to know her--a high-achieving student, cheerleader, and all-around good citizen, she's a perfect emblem of their sunny neighborhood. The night before she's expected to be crowned Homecoming Queen, though, she commits an act of vandalism, then disappears, following a magnetic stranger named Wesley to a bungalow in another part of the state. There, he promises, Alice can be her true self, shedding the shackles of conformity. At the bungalow, however, she learns that four other young women seeking enlightenment and adventure have already followed him there. Her new lifestyle is intoxicating at first, but as Wesley's demands on all of them increase, the house becomes a pressure cooker--until one day they reach the point of no return. Back home, the story of Alice's disappearance and radicalization is framed by the first-person plural chorus of the mothers who knew her before, who worry about her, but also resent the tear she made in the fabric of their perfect world, one that exposes the question: Isn't suburbia a kind of cult unto itself? Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere with the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline's The Girls, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.

We Can Only Save Ourselves

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#hardcover #fiction #cults #ya #youngadult #fiction 

Indiana

All that Pearl knows can be encapsulated in one word: Seed. It is the isolated community that she was born into. It is the land that she sows and reaps. It is the center of her family and everything that means home. And it is all kept under the watchful eye of Papa S. At fifteen years old, Pearl is finally old enough to be chosen as Papa S.'s companion. She feels excitement . . . and surprising trepidation that she cannot explain. The arrival of a new family into the Seed community—particularly the teenage son, Ellis—only complicates the life and lifestyle that Pearl has depended upon as safe and constant. Ellis is compelling, charming, and worldly, and he seems to have a lot of answers to questions Pearl has never thought to ask. But as Pearl digs to the roots of the truth, only she can decide what she will allow to come to the surface. Lisa Heathfield's suspenseful, scintillating debut features a compelling voice that combines blithe naïveté, keen observation, and sincere emotion.

Seed

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Gardiner's Forbidden Knowledge : Revelations about the Freemasons, Templars, Illuminati, Nazis, and the Serpent Cults

Yet again, Gardiner finds himself on a journey across the world to uncover the ancient secrets of the worlds most powerful men.

Secret Societies

Arizona

The Fellowship raised Lark to kill monsters. His partner betrayed them to the Feds. But Lark knows his magic is real, and he’ll do anything to complete his quest. K. M. Szpara follows Docile, one of the most anticipated science fiction novels of 2020, with First, Become Ashes, a fantastic standalone adventure that blends pain and pleasure and will make readers question what is real, and what is magical. Lark spent the first twenty-four years, nine months, and three days of his life training for a righteous quest: to rid the world of monsters. Alongside his partner Kane, he wore the cage and endured the scourge in order to develop his innate magic. He never thought that when Kane left, he'd next see him in the company of FBI agents and a SWAT team. He never dreamed that the leader of the Fellowship of the Anointed would be brought up on charges of abuse and assault. He never expected the government would tell him that the monsters aren't real—that there is no magic, and all the pain was for nothing. Lark isn't ready to give up. He is determined to fulfill his quest, to defeat the monsters he was promised. Along the way he will grapple with the past, confront love, and discover his long-buried truth.

First, Become Ashes

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When a young woman leaves her family—and the civilized world—to join an off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this lush and searing debut novel. At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins an intentional community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear. Thrilling and profound, The Ash Family explores what we will sacrifice in the search for happiness, and the beautiful and grotesque power of the human spirit as it seeks its ultimate place of belonging.

The Ash Family

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Mississippi

The perfect getaway turns into a nightmare when a girl vanishes without a trace in this horror novel that could only have come from the mind of Bram Stoker Award-winning author Bentley Little.

Gary, his girlfriend, Joan, and their friends intend to make the most of their three day vacation from UCLA partying at Burning Man. But soon after they arrive at the festival in the remote desert, Joan disappears. Calls to her parents' home yield only dead air. Her school records are gone. And there's no evidence that Joan, or even her roommate, ever existed. Most disturbing of all is what they do find. 

Among Joan's belongings is a prayer written on a small scroll. It's a safeguard--and a warning--from something called The Outsiders. For Gary and his friends it's the only clue. Now, if they want to find out exactly what happened to Joan, they must follow it. But they may not like what they uncover....

The Disappearance

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#paperback #hollywoodpark #cults #memoir #bookclubs 

The Witch Cult in Western Europe 

The acclaimed author of We Can Only Save Ourselves returns with an urgent and unsettling story that journeys into the heart of religious fanaticism and cult behavior as it probes one woman's struggle to define life on her own terms.

"Here comes trouble," Rosemary's high school English teacher used to say whenever he saw her. Rosemary has often felt like trouble, and now at thirty-two, her marriage to her college sweetheart, Paul, is crumbling. In a last-ditch attempt to restore it, she agrees to give herself over to a newly formed Christian sect in central Texas, run by charismatic young pastor Papa Jake. 

While Paul acclimates quickly to the small town of Dawson and the church's insistence on a strict set of puritanical rules, Rosemary struggles to fit in. She finds purpose only when she's called upon to help Julie, a new mother in the community, who is feeling isolated and lost.

Then the community is rocked by a series of fires which take some church members' homes and nearly take their lives, but which Papa Jake says are holy and a representation of God's will. 

As the fires spread, and Julie is betrayed in a terrible way, Rosemary begins to question the reality of her life, and wonders if trouble will always find her--or if she'll ever be able to outrun it. 

(First Edition Arc) The Burning Season

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Nevada

Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Examines the Church of Scientology; discusses the esoteric cosmology, the auditing process for determining an inductee's state of being, and the Bridge for Total Freedom; and details how the church pursues celebrities.

Going Clear

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#fiction #hardcover #chelseabieker #godshot #contemporary #cults #literaryfiction 

Oregon

#paperback #fiction #heathergraham #romance #romanticsuspense #fantasy #urbanfantasy #vampires #cults #neworleans #vampireromance

Georgia

The woods have always been full of whispers in Transylvania, of terrors that go back centuries to the legendary Vlad Dracul himself. Ignoring their professor's grave warning—beware those who would prey upon the innocent—several visiting students travel into the forest…and disappear. Now their professor, Bryan McAllister, believes that a dark cult is at work—and that their next gathering will happen in America. When psychologist Jessica Fraser is approached by Bryan for her assistance, she is hesitant. Something about Bryan unnerves Jessica deeply, yet she cannot ignore the incredible pull she feels toward him. Now, as reluctant allies, they unite to seek the truth. The search takes them from the forested mountains to dimly lit clubs in New Orleans' French Quarter, where perversion goes beyond sexual to life-threatening. And everywhere, whispering on the wind, is the dreaded word…vampyr.

Kiss of Darkness

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#paperback #nonfiction #truecrime #mormanreligion #jonkrakauer #bestseller #cults 

Massachusetts

A Story of Violent Faith

Traces the events that surrounded the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by fundamentalist Mormons Ron and Dan Lafferty, exploring the belief systems and traditions, including polygamy, that mark the faith's most extreme factions and what their practices reflect about the nature of religion in America. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 300,000 first printing.

Under the Banner of Heaven

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Colorado

Inside the Freemasons, the Yakuza, Skull and Bones, and the World's Most Notorious Secret Organizations

From the Mafia and the Yakuza to the Priory of Sion, Skull and Bones and the Templars, John Lawrence Reynolds offers illuminating and entertaining exploration of the stories that surround these societies.

They generate fear, suspicion, and--above all--fascination. Secret societies thrive among us, yet they remain shrouded in mystery. Their secrecy suggests, to many, sacrilege or crime, and their loyalties are often accused of undermining governments and tipping the scales of justice.

The Freemasons, for example, hold more seats of power in the U.S. government than any other organization. No fewer than sixteen presidents have declared their Masonic affiliation, and there may have been more. Secret societies have infiltrated pop culture as well. Celebrity members of Kabbalah include Madonna, Demi Moore, and Elizabeth Taylor, among others.

Dispelling myths and providing gripping revelations--such as a direct historical link between the Assassins of the Middle Ages and today's Al Qaeda--Secret Societies gives us a smart, surprising look at Druids and Gnostics, Wiccans, Roscrucians, and more. Here are intimate details of the best known and often least understood covert organizations.

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#hardcover #biography #cult #cults #memoir #polygamy #religion #truecrime 

A woman forced into a plural marriage as a teenager with a man thirty-two years her senior describes the years of psychological abuse she suffered, her decision to escape with her eight children, and her successful battle with the church over custody of her children.

Rio Youers

Halcyon

Peggy Riley

Amity and Sorrow

Renardo Barden

Cults

Brooke Beyfuss

(Signed) After We Were Stolen

Chelsea Bieker

Godshot

Shea Ernshaw

A History of Wild Places

Gore Vidal

Messiah

Harvey Cox

Turning East

Mikel Jollett

Hollywood Park

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Lisa Heathfield

Seed

Philip Gardiner

Secret Societies

K. M. Szpara

First, Become Ashes

Molly Dektar

The Ash Family

Bentley Little

The Disappearance

Mikel Jollett

Hollywood Park

Margaret A Murray

The Witch Cult in Western Europe

Alison Wisdom

(First Edition Arc) The Burning Season

Lawrence Wright

Going Clear

Chelsea Bieker

Godshot

Heather Graham

Kiss of Darkness

Jon Krakauer

Under the Banner of Heaven

John Lawrence Reynolds

Secret Societies

Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer

Escape