#hardcover #youngadult #jennifermoffett #thosewhoprey #cult 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Alabama

Sadie meets The Girls in this riveting debut psychological thriller about a lonely college freshman seduced into joining a cult—and her desperate attempt to escape before it’s too late. College life isn’t what Emily expected. She expected to spend freshman year strolling through the ivy-covered campus with new friends, finally feeling like she belonged. Instead, she walks the campus alone, still not having found her place or her people so far away from home. But then the Kingdom finds her. The Kingdom, an exclusive on-campus group, offers everything Emily expected out of college and more: acceptance, friends, a potential boyfriend, and a chance to spend the summer on a mission trip to Italy. But the trip is not what she thought it would be. Emily and the others are stripped of their passports and money. They’re cut off from their families back home. The Kingdom’s practices become increasingly manipulative and dangerous… And someone ends up dead.

Those Who Prey

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Georgia

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.

Escape

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Linda Crew

This is a excellent library copy!  Fascinating story!  The cover is stunning.


Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Ohio

A True Story Imagined

In this story based on true events, sixteen-year-old Eva and her female friends become obsessed with a charismatic young man who comes to Corvallis, Oregon, in 1904, claiming to be a Christian prophet.

Brides of Eden (daguerreotype cover

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Courtney Summers

Florida

A Novel

"A powerful, suspenseful, and heartbreaking thriller about identity, sisterhood, and belonging." - Kirkus (Starred Review) "Masterfully written and pulling no punches...Summers creates and sustains almost unbearable tension, exploring sacrifice, loss, forgiveness, miracles, surrender, grief, and lies. A gripping, flawless psychological thriller ready to leave readers shattered." - School Library Journal (Starred Review) "In this compelling and absorbing YA novel, two sisters make the most painful of choices based on their love for one another." - Shelf Awareness From Courtney Summers, the New York Times bestselling author of the 2019 Edgar Award Winner and breakout hit, Sadie, comes a sensational follow-up—another pulls-no-punches thriller about an aspiring young journalist determined to save her sister from a cult. "The Unity Project saved my life." Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo's sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there's more to the group than meets the eye. She's spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it. "The Unity Project murdered my son." When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its charismatic and mysterious leader, Lev Warren, he proposes a deal: if she can prove the worst of her suspicions about The Unity Project, she may expose them. If she can't, she must finally leave them alone. But as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members, and spends more time with Lev, it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what's real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn't know if she can afford not to. Welcome to The Unity Project. "This book is brave and raw and exciting and wise--wise about girls and women, weakness and strength, and the bittersweet beauty of being human."--Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood Series

The Project

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#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #youngadult #thriller #youngadultfiction #cult #ya 

Mississippi

#hardcover #fiction #suspensethrillers #youngadult #thriller #youngadultfiction #ya #cult 

Michigan

California

Emma Cline

New York

THE INSTANT BESTSELLER • An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Financial Times • Esquire • Newsweek • Vogue • Glamour • People • The Huffington Post • Elle • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out • BookPage • Publishers Weekly • Slate Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to 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. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award • Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Emma Cline—One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists Praise for The Girls “Spellbinding . . . a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.”—The New York Times Book Review “Extraordinary . . . Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.”—The Washington Post “Hypnotic.”—The Wall Street Journal “Gorgeous.”—Los Angeles Times “Savage.”—The Guardian “Astonishing.”—The Boston Globe “Superbly written.”—James Wood, The New Yorker “Intensely consuming.”—Richard Ford “A spectacular achievement.”—Lucy Atkins, The Times “Thrilling.”—Jennifer Egan “Compelling and startling.”—The Economist

The Girls

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Mikel Jollett

New Hampshire

A Memoir

“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 “Jollett engagingly narrates his story...result[ing] in a shocking but contemplative memoir about the aftermath of an unhealthy upbringing.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW 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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#hardcover #suspensethrillers #youngadult #cult #youngadultfiction #ya 

Pennsylvania

Stephanie Oakes

With a harrowing poetic voice, this contemporary page-turner is perfect for fans of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, Julie Berry's All The Truth That's in Me, and the works of Ellen Hopkins. The Kevinian cult has taken everything from seventeen-year-old Minnow: twelve years of her life, her family, her ability to trust. And when she rebelled, they took away her hands, too. Now their Prophet has been murdered and their camp set aflame, and it's clear that Minnow knows something?but she's not talking. As she languishes in juvenile detention, she struggles to un-learn everything she has been taught to believe, adjusting to a life behind bars and recounting the events that led up to her incarceration. But when an FBI detective approaches her about making a deal, Minnow sees she can have the freedom she always dreamed of?if she's willing to part with the terrible secrets of her past. The Sacred Lies of Minnow By is a hard-hitting and hopeful story about the dangers of blind faith?and the power of having faith in oneself.

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

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Wisconsin

"Seattle gallery owner Virginia Troy has spent years battling the demons that stem from her childhood time in a cult and the night a fire burned through the compound, killing her mother. And now one of her artists has taken her own life, but not before sending Virginia a last picture: a painting that makes Virginia doubt everything about the so-called suicide-- and her own past"--

Promise Not to Tell

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

Maryland

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

“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 find her mother no matter what it takes. 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.

Godshot

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Jennifer Moffett

Missouri

Kyria Abrahams

Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing

In the tradition of bestselling memoirs like "Running With Scissors" and "A Girl Named Zippy," a young comedian shares the raucously funny, deeply unsettling story of a girlhood and young womanhood spent in expectation of the Apocalypse.

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed

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#hardcover #suspensethrillers #autographed #catherinemckenzie #youcantcatchme #cult

Louisiana

*autographed copy*

When the game is deception, nothing is as it seems in this novel of cunning psychological suspense by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of I'll Never Tell. Do you want to play a game? Twelve years ago Jessica Williams escaped a cult. Thanks to the private detective who rescued her, she reintegrated into society, endured an uncomfortable notoriety, and tried to put it all behind her. Then, at an airport bar, Jessica meets a woman with an identical name and birth date. It appears to be just an odd coincidence--until a week later, when Jessica finds her bank account drained and her personal information stolen. Following a trail of the grifter's victims, each with the same name, Jessica gathers players--one by one--for her own game. According to her plan, they'll set a trap and wait for the impostor to strike again. But plans can go awry, and trust can fray, and as Jessica tries to escape the shadows of her childhood, the risks are greater than she imagined. Now, confronting the casualties of her past, Jessica can't help but wonder... Who will pay the price?

You Can't Catch Me

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#hardcover #suspense #fiction #thriller #cult #fbi

Ex-cult member Wendy Davidson seeks to recover from her traumatic past in a small Nevada town, but finds herself threatened by a serial killer known as Red.

Skin

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This #cult womens novel is incredible! Read if you like the boys club or the whisper network #fiction #thriller #hardcover 

A "propulsive thriller about secret organizations, hidden agendas, and the lengths one woman will go to reclaim her life" (Laura Dave, author of Reese's Book Club Pick The Last Thing He Told Me) from USA TODAY bestselling author Catherine McKenzie.

At thirty-nine, Nicole Mueller's life is on the rocks. Her once brilliant law career is falling apart. She and her husband, Dan, are soon to be forced out of the apartment they love. After a warning from her firm's senior partners, she receives an invitation from an exclusive women's networking group, Panthera Leo. Membership is anonymous, but every member is a successful professional. It sounds like the perfect solution to help Nicole revive her career. So, despite Dan's concerns that the group might be a cult, Nicole signs up for their retreat in Colorado.

Once there, she meets the other women who will make up her Pride. A CEO, an actress, a finance whiz, a congresswoman: Nicole can't believe her luck. The founders of Panthera Leo are equally as impressive. They explain the group's core philosophy: they're a girl's club in a boy's club world.

Nicole is all in. And when she gets home, she soon sees dividends. Her new network quickly provides her with clients that help her relaunch her career, and a great new apartment too. The favors she has to provide in return seem benign. But then she's called to the congresswoman's apartment late at night where she's pressed into helping her cover up a crime. And suddenly, Dan's concerns that something more sinister is at play seem all too relevant. Can Nicole extricate herself from the group before it's too late? Or will joining Panthera Leo be the biggest mistake of her life?

Please Join Us

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New Mexico

The Haven, a commune in the mountains, seems harmless -- until Mailee's best friend Cara decides she's going to stay there forever. How far will Mailee go to bring her friend home?

Girl in a Bad Place

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Sara Douglass

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Dark Glass Mountain Book One

Sara Douglass has won legions of fans around the world for her epic tales of sorcery, forbidden love, and heart-pounding action. Now, with the DarkGlass Mountain saga, she reveals her biggest adventure yet.

Rescued from unspeakable horror, Ishbel Brunelle has devoted her life to a Serpent cult that reads the future in the entrails of its human sacrifices. But the Serpent has larger plans for Ishbel than merely being archpriestess, plans that call for a dangerous royal marriage balancing on the edge between treachery and devotion, and an eerie, eldritch warning: Prepare for the Lord of Elcho Falling . . .

And there are other dangers. For while Tencendor is gone, even its fall cannot destroy the Icarii. As the Tyrant of Isembaard reaches for glory, both StarDrifter SunSoar and his son, Axis, are pulled into the deadly dance of intrigue and sorcery. The DarkGlass Mountain--once known as the Threshold--is waiting, and as the Dark God Kanubai rises from his prison in exile, no one will escape unscathed.

The Serpent Bride

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Will Hill

Utah

Moonbeam, seventeen, survives a devastating confrontation between government forces and the cult she grew up in, but will need a lot of help to heal mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Save this search

Jennifer Moffett

Those Who Prey

Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer

Escape

Linda Crew

Brides of Eden (daguerreotype cover

Courtney Summers

The Project

Courtney Summers

The Project

Courtney Summers

The Project

Courtney Summers

The Project

Emma Cline

The Girls

Mikel Jollett

Hollywood Park

Courtney Summers

The Project

Courtney Summers

The Project

Stephanie Oakes

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

Jayne Ann Krentz

Promise Not to Tell

Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer

Escape

Chelsea Bieker

Godshot

Jennifer Moffett

Those Who Prey

Kyria Abrahams

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed

Catherine McKenzie

You Can't Catch Me

Ted Dekker

Skin

Catherine McKenzie

Please Join Us

Kaitlin Ward

Girl in a Bad Place

Sara Douglass

The Serpent Bride

Will Hill

After the Fire

Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer

Escape