Last year I guided my reading with the theme of serial killers in fiction. You can check out that series here. I learned two things from that experience:

• I am not nearly as academic about my reading as I was twenty years ago. I want to enjoy a good story. I want to think and ponder. I am not great at contextualizing in the wider conversation of literature or creating in-depth “studies” about the works I read. I would love to get back into this deeper form of reading, but I don’t think it’s something I have the capacity for at the moment.
• I love having a list of books to read that are all related! It helps cut down on the panic of “what will I read next!?!” and also eases that weird feeling of missing a book after it ends.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to continue my “series” this year, shifting the topic to books about cults. Similar to my “rules” from last year, I’m looking for books that:

1. The books must be fictional. No memoir. No non-fiction.
2. The books should not be too closely based on real cults. (I am going to make some exceptions on this one, probably more than I made in the serial killer series, simply because there are some closely-inspired books out there that I do want to read).
3. I’m not looking for full-world cults. I don’t want cults the size of a country or planet, but rather small pockets of people.

At the moment, the following list is a very rough outline of some of the books that seemed interesting to me. One of the issues I’m already running into is that there are thousands and thousands of books that feature cults, and a lot of them seem good. So expect this list to grow and shrink over time. I’ll end up leaving a lot of books out, unfortunately. But that’s where suggestions from others come in. I hope people will guide me to the best of the best.

Have a book I should have to the list? Write to me on my contact form. Have an arc for a book featuring a cult that you think I’d like? Send it over.

Read Along

This year I’m trying a read along in Story Graph. I haven’t done a lot in Story Graph before. So this may or may not work. But you can join one of two challenges:

• Cults In Fiction – Free Range Cults challenges you to read six books from various perspectives.
• Exploring Cults In Fiction is a more specific challenge that has twelve books on my TBR. I will start buddy reads for each of the books, and I will let you know when I’m reading them.

Reading Now: On Pause

Title	Author	Year Published	Genre	Type of Cult	Status
The Shadow Over Innsmouth	H.P. Lovecraft	1936
Jamaica Inn	Daphne du Maurier	1936
Jesus Song	R.R. Knudson	1974
Blinded by the Light	Robin F. Brancato	1978
The Cult	Max Ehrlich	1978
Geek Love	Katherine Dunn	1989			Need to Re-read
Vineland	Thomas Pynchon	1990
Mao II	Don DeLillo	1991
Survivor	Chuck Palahniuk	1999
The Stepford Wives	Ira Levin	2002
The Year of the Flood	Margaret Atwood	2003	Dystopian	Climate Cult	Read
The Chosen One	Carol Lynch Williams	2009
The Girls	Emma Cline	2016	literary	personality	Read
The Devil’s Daughter	Katee Robert	2017	Thriller/Romance	non-christian religious (Persephone)	Read
The Family	Marissa Kennerson	2014
The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly	Stephanie Oakes	2015
Seed	Lisa Heathfield	2015
Mr. Splitfoot	Samantha Hunt	2016
Gather The Daughters	Jennie Melamed	2017
Bunny	Mona Awad	2019	cosmic horror	magic	Read
Godshot	Chelsea Bieker	2020	literary	religious	Read
The Project	Courtney Summers	2021
The Night We Burned	S.F. Kosa	2021	Psychological Thriller	commune (spiritual)	Read
Black Sheep	Rachel Harrison	2023
Mister Magic	Kiersten White	2023	Cosmic horror	vague	Read
The Faceless Thing We Adore	Hester Steel	2025	Cosmic Horror	pagan	Read