Biographies About
Cult Figures

From biographies of notorious cult leaders to the true stories of those who escaped extremist
religions and sects, these chilling memoirs document life on the fringes of belief.

In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the twentieth century’s most...

In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen Innocence, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the FLDS Church, takes you deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped it. Born into the Fundamentalist...

In this gripping and eloquent book, Susan Ray Schmidt tells the story of growing up on the inside of a rogue Mormon cult and of her ultimate escape with her children from an oppressive and violent life....

Including a new afterword, Captive is an emotional, ripped-from-the-headlines exposé that lays bare the inner workings of the secretive NXIVM cult that shocked the world. I am a mother whose child is being abused and exploited. And I am not alone. In 2011, former Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg...

Any work about the mercurial Aleister Crowley is better off being labeled a “story” than a “biography” thanks to the impossibility of being sure that anything one reads about him is true....

A father-daughter story that tells of the author’s experience growing up in a separatist fundamentalist Christian cult, from the author of the national bestseller Ghostwalk Rebecca Stott grew up in in Brighton, England, as a fourth-generation member of the Exclusive Brethren, a cult that...

In this colorful, eye-opening memoir, Jayanti Tamm offers an unforgettable glimpse into the hidden world of growing up cult in mainstream America....

After seven years of faithfully following her spiritual teacher, Renee Linnell finally realized she was in a cult and had been severely brainwashed. But how did that happen to someone like her? She had graduated magna cum laude with a double degree....

From New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of The Nine and The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson, the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the...

The basis for the upcoming HBO miniseries and the "definitive account of the Jonestown massacre" (Rolling Stone) -- now available for the first time in paperback. Tim Reiterman’s Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown...

The only book to examine the origins of Scientology's current leader, Ruthless tells the revealing story of David Miscavige's childhood and his path to the head seat of the Church of Scientology told through the eyes of his father. Ron Miscavige's personal, heartfelt story is a riveting...

Best-selling memoirist Julia Scheeres traces the fates of five individuals who followed Jim Jones to South America as they struggled to first build their paradise, and then survive it....

The basis of the celebrated Paramount Network miniseries starring Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitsch -- Waco is the critically-acclaimed, first person account of the siege by Branch Davidian survivor, David Thibodeau. Twenty-five years ago, the FBI staged a deadly raid on the Branch Davidian...

Despite considerable press coverage and a lengthy trial, the full story of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has remained largely untold....

You've watched Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, the top 5 true-crime docuseries on Netflix. Now discover the revealing memoir of one woman featured in the series who was forced into polygamous marriage and her brave struggle to protect others from the same fate. Rebecca Musser grew up in fear...

Life for Irene Spencer was a series of devastating disappointments and hardships....

When she was 18 years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger, a man 32 years her senior....

In the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), girls can become valuable property as plural wives, but boys are expendable, even a liability. In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he...

In March 1997, 39 people in Rancho Santa Fe, California, ritually terminated their lives. To outsiders, it was a mass suicide. To insiders, it was a graduation....