Religious Cults

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 September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind bars after a conviction during a bitter custody dispute.

Four years after his father died a hero's death fighting a fire, Tim Ginocchetti was behind bars for killing his mother. How one tragedy led to another is a true story that puts a horrifying twist on the familiar one of bullied gay teens. In this case, the bully was the teen's own mother, and instead of harming himself he killed her in a momentary but irreversible explosion of rage.

This is the story of a Canadian woman who was in the Advanced Training Institute, run by Bill Gothard, for fourteen years. The amazing thing is that she never knew she was in a cult until several years after she was out. That's what happened to Christine in 2014. She has spent the past nine years trying to deprogram and change the way she sees the world. Join her as she navigates the cult, goes through a divorce, finds out she was in a cult and subsequently has to unlearn all she believed to be true.

Tim Reiterman's Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award-winning work explores the ideals gone wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America.

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.

As a secular exorcist, Rachel H. Stavis has cleansed thousands of tormented people, from small children and Hollywood moguls to stay-at-home moms and politicians. But for many years, the horror screenwriter and novelist denied her gift. As a little girl, she began to see "monsters" floating around her bedroom or attached to other children. Told it was only her imagination, Rachel learned to ignore the things she saw. But a series of events in adulthood forced her to acknowledge her unique ability and embrace her power to heal.

On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the 20th century's most notorious criminals and life as one of his "girls". While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying chapters in modern American history.

In 1971 Paulette Cooper wrote a scathing book about the Church of Scientology. Desperate to shut the book down, Scientology unleashed on her one of the most sinister personal campaigns the free world has ever known. The onslaught, which lasted years, ruined her life and drove her to the brink of suicide. The story of Paulette's terrifying ordeal is told in full for the first time in The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.

Mania surrounding messianic prophets has defined the national consciousness since the American Revolution. From Civil War veteran and virulent anticapitalist Cyrus Teed, to the dapper and overlooked civil rights pioneer Father Divine, to even the megalomaniacal Jim Jones, these figures have routinely been dismissed as dangerous and hysterical outliers. After years of studying these emblematic figures, Adam Morris demonstrates that messiahs are not just a classic trope of our national culture; their visions are essential for understanding American history.

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.

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.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on, and followed, and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church's spokesman on camera, and his infamous 'exploding tomato' clip was seen by millions around the world.

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests, and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Reviews) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity.

Banished is an eye-opening, deeply personal account of life inside the cult known as the Westboro Baptist Church, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance. Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. Banished is the story of Lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.

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.

Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where 12 eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Meals remain untouched on dining room tables, cars are still in garages, and the town's residents have vanished into thin air. This is the disturbing setting where vacationing medical examiner Maura Isles and her traveling companions find themselves trapped during a ferocious snowstorm.