Religious Crime

When Misty was six years old, her family started to live and dress like the Amish. Misty and her sister were kept as slaves on a mountain ranch where they were subjected to almost complete isolation, sexual abuse, and extreme physical violence. When Misty reached her teens, her parents feared she and her sister would escape and took them to an Amish community where they were adopted and became baptized members. Misty was devastated to once again find herself in a world of fear, animal cruelty, and sexual abuse.

Many have heard of NXIVM and its creator, Keith Raniere, the unassuming Albany man now prosecuted for ensnaring tens of thousands of people in the US, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere to do his bidding and pay millions of dollars to participate in his self-improvement methodology. But where did Keith Raniere begin? Enter Toni Natalie, Keith's Patient Zero, the first one indoctrinated into Raniere's methodology and the first one to escape.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him - with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined.

When he first met the man who called himself David Koresh, David Thibodeau was drumming for a rock band that was going nowhere fast. Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff. In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired.

When Charlie Dodge gets a phone call from a frantic woman stating her daughter has been kidnapped by her ex-husband and taken into a cult called Fourth Dimension, he takes the case without hesitation. The cult’s rumored purpose is to gather men with psychic abilities with the goal of breeding a race of people who have supernatural powers. Once accepted into the cult, men are given a young girl to marry in exchange for one of their own daughters.

Right under the noses of neighbors, clients, spouses, children, and friends, a secret society, simply called School—a cult of snared Manhattan professionals—has been led by the charismatic, sociopathic, and dangerous leader Sharon Gans for decades. Spencer Schneider was recruited in the eighties, and he stayed for more than twenty-three years as his life disintegrated, his self-esteem eroded, and he lined the pockets of Gans and her cult.

When Deb Moerke and her husband decided to become foster parents, they never imagined how their lives would change. And never did they imagine their worst nightmare coming true: Their five-year-old foster daughter, Hannah, murdered at the hands of her birth mom, Karen. The Moerkes were overwhelmed with horror and grief. And just when they didn’t think they could bear any more, Deb received a phone call from Karen in prison. Facing a life sentence for Hannah’s murder, she was pregnant. And Karen had an incredible request: Would Deb take her unborn baby and love it as her own?

In 1981, ambitious young Ma Anand Sheela transported the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the United States to fulfill his dream of creating a utopia for his thousands of disciples. Four years later, the incendiary Rajneeshpuram commune in Oregon collapsed under the weight of audacious criminal conspiracies hatched in its inner sanctum, including the largest bioterrorism attack in US history, an unprecedented election fraud scheme, and multiple attempted murders. Rajneeshpuram explores how this extraordinary spiritual community went so wrong.

Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma’s favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart, earned a degree from Bible college, and settled into a family and a stable career. Needless to say, it was a big surprise when Cousin Danny started robbing banks.

Investigators and Central Florida residents were horrified when 16-year-old vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell was arrested and charged with bludgeoning a cult member's parents. When they realized the slain couple's 15-year-old daughter was missing, they feared she was a victim, too. Detectives and journalists swarming over three states soon uncovered a web of blood-drinking occult rituals, illicit sex, wildly dysfunctional families, and spiritual warfare.

Mission at Nuremberg is Tim Townsend's gripping story of the American Army chaplain sent to save the souls of the Nazis incarcerated at Nuremberg, a compelling and thought-provoking tale that raises questions of faith, guilt, morality, vengeance, forgiveness, salvation, and the essence of humanity.

Meet Serafina Trent. A woman about to take 19th Century London by storm. It's London, 1857, and everything is at stake for Serafina Trent. A woman of means...but not the typical Victorian lady who feels her place is to be seen and not heard. When her brother's most recent female dalliance, a beautiful actress, is found murdered, all evidence points to him. Especially since the actress had just rejected him in a most public manner. Now everyone believes Clive is headed for the gallows. Everyone, that is, but Serafina.

Sí, Señor es la historia de cómo Dios tomó el control de la vida de Fermín IV. Parte de una memoria y parte de una historia de redención, este libro es una crónica de la vida de Fermín: desde ser un famoso rapero que hablaba sobre drogas y alcohol hasta ser el pastor de una de las iglesias más grandes de la ciudad de México que ahora habla sobre el amor y la redención de Dios.

For thirty years, John Bishop was a pastor. Along the way, he learned that everyone does stupid things. We lie to our families. We lie to ourselves. We take long lunch breaks and sneak cigarettes when we said we’d quit. Sometimes, we take a sabbatical from our nice, comfortable life as a pastor and start running drugs for the Sinaloa Cartel, then get caught and spend five years in federal prison.

A riveting storyline that includes a sting operation carried out by 20-armed federal agents on the tarmac of a South Florida runway, and the tales of a prisoner living inside America’s maximum security prison, Leavenworth Penitentiary – this autobiography will captivate you from start to finish.

The normally quiet Dutch town of Leiden is horrified when the chairman of the local Masonic lodge is brutally killed. Almost simultaneously, an old manuscript is discovered in which an anonymous author tells the hidden history of the Pilgrims – the Founding Fathers of the United States. From 1609 to 1620 they lived in Leiden, after which some of them left for America. University teacher Peter de Haan is drawn into the mystery. Why did so many of the Pilgrims stay behind in Leiden? What involvement do the Freemasons have?

A lo largo de la historia la supuesta divinidad que rodea a los papas en múltiples ocasiones ha descendido a mundos de lujuria, conspiraciones, vicios y sexo, que tan poco relacionados se consideraban con aquellos hombres supuestamente tocados por el dedo de Dios. Vamos a conocer en este audiolibro a papas violadores, homosexuales, fetichistas, pederastas, travestís, sadomasoquistas y seguidores de todo tipo de tendencias, que en principio nos pueden parecer incomprensibles por el concepto de Papa.

Growing up, Michael wanted nothing more than to follow in his dad’s footsteps and join the family business. Aged 18, he did just that and entered into the glamourous, dangerous world of organised crime. Michael’s father, a career criminal and contemporary of the infamous Krays, was a wayward role model. Soon, Michael’s criminal activities were funding a reckless lifestyle of drugs, sex, and violence.

The Shroud of Turin: The ancient linen cloth bears the image of a man, alleged to be that of Jesus of Nazareth. What if it were real? What if it contained a secret powerful enough to alter the course of human history? And what if it fell into the wrong hands? Manny Lusum is convinced the Shroud is the genuine article and is obsessed with proving it scientifically. Across the globe, three grisly murders and the theft of a secret manuscript thrust Manny and his friend Grace into a generations-old conspiracy of biblical proportions. From New York to Rome to the inner sanctum of the Vatican, they struggle to untangle a bizarre mystery.