Running Away to Join a Cult

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:

Reading Now: On Pause

No Buddy Read This Month
TitleAuthorYear PublishedGenreType of CultStatus
The Shadow Over InnsmouthH.P. Lovecraft1936
Jamaica InnDaphne du Maurier1936
Jesus SongR.R. Knudson1974
Blinded by the LightRobin F. Brancato1978
The CultMax Ehrlich1978
Geek LoveKatherine Dunn1989Need to Re-read
VinelandThomas Pynchon1990
Mao IIDon DeLillo1991
SurvivorChuck Palahniuk1999
The Stepford WivesIra Levin2002
The Year of the FloodMargaret Atwood2003DystopianClimate Cult Read
The Chosen OneCarol Lynch Williams2009
The GirlsEmma Cline2016literarypersonalityRead
The Devil’s DaughterKatee Robert2017Thriller/Romancenon-christian religious (Persephone)Read
The FamilyMarissa Kennerson2014
The Sacred Lies of Minnow BlyStephanie Oakes2015
SeedLisa Heathfield2015
Mr. SplitfootSamantha Hunt2016
Gather The DaughtersJennie Melamed2017
BunnyMona Awad2019cosmic horrormagicRead
GodshotChelsea Bieker2020literaryreligiousRead
The ProjectCourtney Summers2021
The Night We BurnedS.F. Kosa2021Psychological Thrillercommune (spiritual)Read
Black SheepRachel Harrison2023
Mister MagicKiersten White2023Cosmic horrorvagueRead
The Faceless Thing We AdoreHester Steel2025Cosmic HorrorpaganRead

Serial Killers AND cults? Oh my!

Getting my hands on A Thousand Natural Shocks has been a real quest this year. The e-book is not for sale internationally, and I couldn’t find any booksellers who could import it to Bulgaria. I even wrote to the publisher, seeing if there was any international shop that had an e-book. No dice. It was…

Dissecting Cults In Fiction

Intro to cults in literature part II: genre expectations and what I’m looking for in my readings.

Joining the Cult

Introduction to the series “Joining the Cult”

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