Cult Fiction
Want to read about cults in fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, and thrillers? Check out these titles for stories of people drawn in by charismatic leaders and promises of community. (Created April 2026)
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Upcountry
Moving to the Catskills with her husband, Claire Pedersen, while renovating their new home, is left to savage the life she had imagined when her husband has an affair with Anna, a young member of a nearby religious community called The Eternals. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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In the Land of Simplicity
Cartoonist Lubchansky delivers a razor-sharp graphic novel that imagines a near-future where the tension between submitting to bureaucratic control and the ability to pursue individual freedoms clash in a village in the Catskill Mountains. (Library Journal)
Format: Graphic Novel
Availability: All copies in use
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Our Last Resort
Raised in a cult run by the charismatic leader Émile, Frida and Gabriel became close and began to refer to themselves as brother and sister... Alternating between the present and the past, this story is full of dark twists, shocking surprises, and strong messages about love, lies, loyalty, trust, suspicion, control, and connection. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Sister Deborah
Rwandan French writer Mukasonga delivers a dazzling and witty narrative of a Black Christian cult in early 20th-century Rwanda. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Velorio
Navarro Aquino debuts with an elegiac and fervent ode to Puerto Rico that opens in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, as people grow increasingly desperate for food, water, and gasoline. In the absence of effective government, a magnetic young man named Urayoán sees an opportunity to take power, and—supported by his red-shirted minions—founds a self-sufficient society called Memoria. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Ecstasy
Traveling to Naxos seeking freedom, the newly widowed Lena finds herself drawn to a mysterious group of women who live in tents on the beach, where she discovers her own dark desires and accidentally awakens ancient forces. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Thick and the Lean
Porter uses exquisite dystopian worldbuilding to critique the Western obsession with controlling women’s bodies in this powerful sci-fi fable. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Storm of Locusts
Kai and Caleb Goodacre have been kidnapped just as rumors of a cult sweeping across the reservation leads Maggie and Hastiin to investigate an outpost, and what they find there will challenge everything they’ve come to know. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Only the Guilty Survive
A podcaster digs into strange connections between a cult's mass suicide and the murder of a local beauty queen in a twisty psychological thriller about true crime culture. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Mean Ones
A horror novel about a woman who survived cult killings as a child and is striving to be "normal," but a spontaneous trip into the woods and the voices in her head keep pulling her to the dark side. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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