Mystery Cults

Learn about the history of Doomsday Cults with iMinds insightful knowledge series. A doomsday cult is a quasi-religious group that believe the end of the world is imminent. Doomsday cults are typically led by charismatic messiah-figures, who teach that their cult holds the secret to surviving the apocalypse. More recently the term has come to include cults who carry out acts of violence or terrorism in an attempt to bring about revolutionary change.

Tribulation is a twisted mystery about an end-of-days religious cult manipulating space and traveling across planes of existence on electricity and radio signals. Cult members willingly accept seven brutal years of torture, known as their “tribulation,” to atone for their earthly sins and come out on the other side saved (or thoroughly brainwashed?). The hero of this thriller, Stacy Carlson, must uncover the mystery of the Tribulation cult after her husband Greg is kidnapped by its leader, Brother Elijah (Josh Charles), through a bizarre AM radio broadcast.

In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. George and Kathleen Lutz knew that, one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers, and sisters in the house, but the property - complete with boathouse and swimming pool - and the price were too good to pass up. This is the shocking true story of an American dream that turned into a nightmare beyond imagining for the Lutz family, who were forced to flee their new home in terror.

Harlow has almost everything she ever wanted: a passionate marriage, an adorable stepson, and a fresh start at her husband Gregor’s boyhood home on the water. If only she could get pregnant, her happiness would be complete. But soon after they arrive on the misty, tree-cloaked island, Gregor starts to change—and Harlow is shaken by his odd connection to their neighbor Kirsten, a luminous tradwife influencer.

As a girl, Joanna Chase thrived on Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana until tragedy upended her life. Now thirty-four and living in Santa Fe with only misty memories of the past, she begins to receive pleas—by phone, through her TV, in her dreams: I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me. Heeding the disturbing appeals, Joanna is compelled to return to Montana, and to a strange childhood companion she had long forgotten.

When a series of suspicious fires leaves multiple victims dead in their homes, NYPD hostage negotiator Abby Mullen knows in her bones that the terrors of her childhood have returned. As a young girl, she narrowly escaped a fire set by Moses Wilcox, a fanatical cult leader who’s been presumed dead for thirty years. These murders have his fingerprints all over them.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Two sensational unsolved crimes—one in the past, another in the present—are linked by one man’s memory and self-deception in this chilling novel of literary suspense from National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall...

Seven legendary unproduced screenplays, resurrected and reinvented for BBC Radio 4 The annals of movie history are full of lost treasures – spectacular scripts from world-renowned writers that could have been classics, had they only been made. Now, for the first time, some of these forgotten...

Historians Cameron Thorne and Amanda Spencer-Gunn discover a fourteenth-century journal which confirms a long-rumored historical heresy: The medieval Church outlawed the Knights Templar because the warrior monks were secretly worshiping the ancient Goddess. The journal also sucks Cam and Amanda into the orbit of a ruthless cabal of modern-day pagans intent on pushing America into the loving arms of the Goddess—whether America wants succor there or not.

As a child, Abby Mullen escaped the insidious Wilcox cult when it literally went down in flames. Years later, she’s the NYPD’s best hostage negotiator and a mother. She thought the worst part of her life was behind her. Until now. Armed conspiracy theorists called the Watchers have attacked the local high school - and taken her daughter hostage. With the delusional Watchers holding her child at gunpoint, the unflappable Abby might be at her breaking point. But the clock is ticking on her daughter’s life.

When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue leads him to a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru's brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn't what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence beneath its surface.

Erheben sich die Toten aus ihren Gräbern, um Angst und Schrecken unter den Lebenden zu verbreiten? Nach mehreren Mordanschlägen durch scheinbare Zombies beginnt sich Panik in New York auszubreiten. Special Agent Pendergast ermittel unter Hochdruck. Eine Spur führt ihn zu einer alten Kirche am Rande Manhattans - und mitten hinein in das Hauptquartier einer Sekte, die finstere Pläne verfolgt...

When Arkham Advertiser reporter Andy van Nortwick receives a mysterious film reel in the mail, with a simple note: "Maude Brion is very much alive!", he steps onto a path which will lead him to the brink of madness. Brion, the famous actress and film director, vanished a year ago on an ill-fated expedition into the Amazon rainforest, delving into the legend of the Spider Queen. Thrilled by the prospect of his big break, Nortwick swings the funds to launch a rescue mission. He gathers a team of explorers and a keen folklorist to bring back Brion and cement his reputation.

"He pushed me." Three words turn a suspected suicide into an unsettling murder, pointing to a killer whose methods and motives threaten to expose buried memories of Seong-Jae's past. Yet neither Malcolm nor Seong-Jae are ready for the shadowed secrets that could shatter their tenuous new relationship, when a haunting presence seems to stalk them around every corner, watching their smallest move, baiting them and flirting just out of reach. Is it the killer, always staying one step ahead?

The galaxy is vast, and worship of the God-Emperor by His faithful takes many forms. The Spiral Dawn is one of the countless sanctioned sects of the Imperial Cult. As a gathering of Spiralytes make their holy pilgrimage to Redemption, the sect's world of origin and a shrine world of the Imperium, they find not a haven of enlightenment and introspection, but a soot-choked hellhole where their order's founders and an unorthodox regiment of Astra Militarum maintain an uneasy coexistence.

Erheben sich die Toten aus ihren Gräbern, um Angst und Schrecken unter den Lebenden zu verbreiten? Nach mehreren Mordanschlägen durch scheinbare Zombies beginnt sich Panik in New York auszubreiten. Special Agent Pendergast ermittel unter Hochdruck.

“Gross is a top-notch thriller writer.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Andrew Gross knows how to make your skin crawl. Eyes Wide Open should be read with the door shut and the lights on; a truly terrifying descent into evil.” —Nelson DeMille New York Times bestselling author Andrew Gross...

‘If you aren’t reading B P Walter yet, now’s the time’ A. J. Finn 'Accomplished, dark and stylish: I will read anything B P Walter writes’ Gillian McAllister ‘A fantastically dark and twisted thriller’ Nikki Smith 'B P Walter’s characterisation is terrifyingly good in this...

Once Dr. Emil Euler Ganz was a preeminent astrophysicist with a worldrenowned reputation. But then he vanished without any warning to his family or colleagues. Fifteen years later, he reappeared as ""Father Jupiter,"" the founder and charismatic leader of the scientific cult, The Order of the...

Investigator Sloan McPherson finds a frightened vagrant suffering from amnesia living in a Florida swamp—then learns he disappeared from Oregon when he was a teenager. To find out how he ended up three thousand miles from home thirty years later, Sloan enlists the help of two brilliant colleagues. FBI agent Jessica Blackwood and scientist Theo Cray have already made an alarming connection. A female classmate of the Everglades drifter disappeared at the same time, and their high school journals reveal ties to an enigmatic figure they both called Mr. Whisper.