an updated cult book rec list (as of April 2026)
I am obsessed with books (and documentaries) about cults. I have read over 30 books surrounding cults.
Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.
Below is a list of all of the cult books that I have read and recommend if you are interested in this high-control groups like I am. My favorite style is memoirs of people who have escaped cults but I am also including other fiction and non-fiction formats. The cult that I have researched the most is the FLDS but I will read, watch documentaries, and do random research on all kinds of cults.
This link takes you to a smaller curation of links to these books from Bookshop.org. (The products featured may have affiliate links)
FLDS (and other LDS offshoot)
The FLDS and the LeBaron Group are two extremist offshoots of the LDS church. I am including books I have read about both of these groups here.
Escape by Carolyn Jessop
Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall
The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner
The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser
Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer
Breaking Free by Rachel Jeffs
The Polygamists Daughter by Anna LeBaron
NXIVM
Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life by Sarah Edmundson
Captive: A Mother's Crusade to Save Her Daughter from a Terrifying Cult by Catherine Oxenberg
Westboro Baptist Church
Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain
Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper
Troubled Teen Industry
Though the Troubled Teen Industry is not technically a cult, they use cult tactics to coerce parents into sending teens there and to control the teens once they are in the system.
Stolen by Elizabeth Gilpin
Dead, Insane, or In Jail by Zack Bonnie
I See You, Survivor by Liz Ianelli
Christian Fundamentalism and other extremist Christian offshoots
Once You Go In by Carly Gelsinger
I Fired God: My Life Inside---and Escape from---the Secret World of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult by Jocelyn Zichterman
Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz
Multi-Level Marketing books
You could call this more of a ‘commercial cult’, but they use high-control group tactics to keep people in their businesses.
Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson
Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans by Jane Marie
The Crownix Beauty Society by Krista Candela (fiction)
Pyramidia by Stephanie Sanders-Jacob (fiction)
Death in the Downline by Maria Abrams (fiction)
Other cults where I’ve read one book or the cult is not named
Wholly Unraveled by Keele Burgin
Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones (the Children of God cult survivor memoir)
The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult by Jerald Walker
Troublemaker by Leah Remini (Scientology survivor memoir)
Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult by Michelle Dowd
Deceived: An Investigative Memoir of the Zion Society Cult by Michael King by Michael King
Cultish by Amanda Montell (the language of cults)
Slonim Woods 9 by Daniel Levin
Brown Girl All Cult Up by Dani Jessant
Fictional cult reads
The Hive by Gregg Olsen
When She Returned by Lucinda Berry
Make No Mistake by Steph Nelson
Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
For more culty book content - check out my book talk podcast - pish posh pages - available wherever podcasts are found! View the full list of episodes HERE.
What books on cults have you read that you think I need to read? Let me know in the comments!