{"id":57737,"date":"2025-11-14T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=57737"},"modified":"2025-11-13T15:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:21:11","slug":"fiction-books-about-cults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/fiction-books-about-cults\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiction Books about Cults"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you read any books about cults lately? I am specifically referring to fiction titles about cults (I don’t mean books that have a dedicated following or fanbase). Instead I want to know about books you have read that are about actual cults or any cult-like phenomena. It feels weird to say, but cult media, either fiction or nonfiction, is right up my alley. Below you will find a list of fiction books about cults that were published in 2025 (and surprisingly there are quite a few)!<\/p>\n

As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. These titles were also published in 2025. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>The Ascent<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Allison Buccola<\/p>\n

For decades, the whereabouts of The Fifteen has been an unsolved mystery. All the members of this reclusive commune outside Philadelphia vanished twenty years ago, except for one: a twelve-year-old girl found wandering alone on the side of the road.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the years since that morning, Lee Burton has tried to put the pain of her past behind her, building a new identity for herself with a doting husband and seven-month-old daughter, Lucy. But motherhood is proving a bigger challenge than she anticipated. She doesn\u2019t want to let Lucy out of her sight even for a moment. She can\u2019t return to work. She\u2019s not sleeping, and she has started spiraling into paranoia.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then a stranger shows up on her doorstep, offering answers to all of Lee\u2019s questions about her past\u2014if Lee could only trust that this woman is who she says she is. Can Lee keep her safe, stable life? Or will new revelations about \u201cthe cult that went missing\u201d shatter everything? In The Ascent, Allison Buccola has crafted a nerve-rattling thriller about motherhood, identity, and the truths we think we know about our families.<\/em> – Random House<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Death in the Downline<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Maria Abrams<\/p>\n

Drew thought she was destined to become a star journalist in New York City. But now she\u2019s back in New Jersey, pushing thirty, newly single, and living with her father.<\/em><\/p>\n

After a chance encounter, she reconnects with her former best friend, Steph, who married young and never left their hometown. But Steph looks . . . good. She\u2019s tanned, glowing, and only wears designer labels. Her secret? A skincare sales opportunity called LuminUS. With nothing left to lose, Drew gets sucked into this glamorous world of downlines, sales parties, and girls\u2019 trips.<\/em><\/p>\n

But when a LuminUS distributor is found dead Drew must uncover the dark secret at the heart of the organization\u2014and save her best friend\u2014before it\u2019s too late.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gripping, wickedly funny, and a pitch-perfect skewering of pyramid schemes, Death in the Downline is a page-turner that will have readers cheering for Drew until the cathartic conclusion.<\/em> – Quirk Books<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Ecstasy<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Ivy Pochoda<\/p>\n

Lena wants her life back. Her wealthy, controlling, humorless husband has just died, and now she contends with her controlling, humorless son, Drew. Lena lands in Naxos with her best friend in tow for the unveiling of her son\u2019s, pet project\u2013the luxurious Agape Villas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Years of marriage amongst the wealthy elite has whittled Lena\u2019s spirit into rope and sinew, smothered by tasteful cocktail dresses and unending small talk. On Naxos she yearns to rediscover her true nature, remember the exuberant dancer and party girl she once was, but Drew tightens his grip, keeping her cloistered inside the hotel, demanding that she fall in line.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lena is intrigued by a group of women living in tents on the beach in front of the Agape. She can feel their drums at night, hear their seductive leader calling her to dance. Soon she\u2019ll find that an ancient God stirs on the beach, awakening dark desires of women across the island. The only questions left will be whether Lena will join them, and what it will cost her.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ecstasy is a riveting, darkly poetic, one-sitting read about empowerment, desire, and what happens when women reject the roles set out for them.<\/em> – G.P. Putnam’s Sons<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>El Dorado Drive<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Megan Abbott<\/p>\n

All I want is to be innocent again. But that\u2019s not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.<\/em><\/p>\n

The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister Pam\u2014currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband\u2014and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wheel offers women like themselves\u2014middle-aged and of declining means\u2014a way to make their own money, independent of husbands or families. Quickly, however, the Wheel\u2019s success, and their own addiction to it, leads to greater and greater risks\u2014and a crime so shocking it threatens to bring everything down with it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about power, vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.<\/em> – G.P. Putnam’s Sons<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Last Session<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Julia Bartz<\/p>\n

When a catatonic woman shows up at her psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears that she knows her from somewhere. She\u2019s shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her own past. Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can\u2019t remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down. Thea\u2019s at a loss\u2014especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared.<\/em><\/p>\n

Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees\u2019 romantic and sexual issues. Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her own harrowing past. However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her sanity\u2026and maybe even her life in this \u201chypnotic fever dream of a book\u201d (Jennifer Fawcett, author of Keep This for Me).<\/em> – Atria \/ Emily Bestler Books<\/p>\n

This title is also available in large print.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>O Sinners!<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>by Nicole Cuffy<\/p>\n

After the death of his father, a young journalist named Faruq Zaidi takes the opportunity to embed himself in a mysterious cult based in the California redwoods and known as \u201cthe nameless,\u201d whose strikingly attractive members adhere to the 18 Utterances, including teachings such as \u201call suffering is distortion\u201d and \u201csee only beauty.\u201d Shepherding them is Odo, an enigmatic Vietnam War veteran who received \u201cthe sight\u201d\u2014the movement\u2019s foundational principles\u2014during his time as an infantryman. Through flashbacks that recount the cult\u2019s wartime origins, we see four soldiers contend with the existential struggles of combat and with their responsibilities to each other, and by the end of the novel we learn which one becomes Odo.<\/em><\/p>\n

Faruq, skeptical but committed to unraveling the mystery of both \u201cthe nameless\u201d and Odo, extends his stay by months, and as he gets deeper into the cult\u2019s inner workings and alluring teachings, he begins to lose his grip on reality. Faruq is forced to come to terms with the memories he has been running from while trying to resist Odo\u2019s spell. Ultimately this immersive and unsettling novel asks: What does it take to find one\u2019s place in the world? And what exactly do we seek from one another?<\/em> – One World<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>So Far Gone<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Jess Walter<\/p>\n

Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now Kinnick\u2019s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia?<\/em><\/p>\n

With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective, and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he\u2019d left behind. So Far Gone is a rollicking, razor-sharp, and moving road trip through a fractured nation, from a writer who has been called \u201ca genius of the modern American moment\u201d (Philadelphia Inquirer).<\/em> – Harper<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Unworthy<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Agustina Maria Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses<\/p>\n

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find\u2014discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe\u2014cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.<\/em><\/p>\n

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past\u2014and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can\u2019t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?<\/em><\/p>\n

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.<\/em> – Scribner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you read any books about cults lately? I am specifically referring to fiction titles about cults (I don’t mean books that have a dedicated following or fanbase). Instead I want to know about books you have read that are about actual cults or any cult-like phenomena. It feels weird[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,5,1,8],"tags":[10539,10528,6471,10529,10747,10531,402,10748,10537,7799,10530,10532,333,10535,10534,10540,10536,10527,10533,10538,444],"class_list":["post-57737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-read-a-likes","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-agustine-maria-bazterrica","tag-allison-buccola","tag-cults","tag-death-in-the-downline","tag-ecstasy","tag-el-dorado-drive","tag-fiction","tag-ivy-pochoda","tag-jess-walter","tag-julia-bartz","tag-maria-abrams","tag-megan-abbott","tag-mystery","tag-nicole-cuffy","tag-o-sinners","tag-sarah-moses","tag-so-far-gone","tag-the-ascent","tag-the-last-session","tag-the-unworthy","tag-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-f1f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57737"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57737\/revisions\/58302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}