With Australian new releases, as well as critically acclaimed novels from further abroad, there's plenty to read if you're keen on cults. Work your way through this list to explore everything from the dark side of cult beauty to the dangerous pinnacle of toxic masculinity.
The Bearcat
Georgia Rose Phillips
An intimate psychological portrait inspired by the true story of an ordinary girl who grows into a notorious cult leader – and the family that shaped her.
1987. Family is everything to Anne. And Anne demands everything from The Family – their loyalty, their money, even their children. In return, she promises existential comfort to the lost and weary women. Because Anne knows how hard it is to build a family – and how devastatingly easy it is to lose one.
1921. A child is born on a sticky summer evening. Her mother, Florence, is isolated and overwhelmed, trapped at home with an indifferent husband and a newborn whose demands are relentless. A childless neighbour's offer of help is a lifeline as Florence struggles to reconcile motherhood and her shifting sense of self.
For both Anne and Florence, the past is for escaping, and love is impossible to trust. All they can hope for is that their family will save them.
Rytual
Chloe Elisabeth Wilson
Marnie Sellick is adrift when she lands a job at the coveted, mysterious beauty brand rytuał cosmetica.
The enigmatic founder and CEO, Luna Peters, takes a liking to Marnie, and as the two grow closer Marnie becomes intoxicated by the life that Luna, and rytuał, can offer her.
But all is not what it seems at rytuał. Luna has a cult-like hold over the all-female staff, and that's not to mention what happens at their weekly Friday Night Drinks.
As Marnie edges closer to the darkness at the centre of rytuał's millennial pink facade, cracks begin to show. Luna is hiding something, but will Marnie uncover the truth – and the role Luna has cast her in – before it's too late?
Available from 6 May.
Colony
Annika Norlin, translated by Alice E. Olsson
Everyone has a task for the community. Everyone is needed. No one has to know everything.
One morning, Emelie can't get out of bed. Her therapist calls it burnout. Her neighbour calls it the tiny work death. She needs to get away from the brightness of the city lights, the noise of the people, the constant demands – so she goes to the woods, pitches her tent overlooking the lake, breathes. And that's where she sees them, the Colony…
Who are they? What do they mean to each other? And why do they behave in such strange ways – thanking the fish they eat, sleeping under a tree, singing off key, dancing without music?
As Emelie becomes more and more drawn to the Colony, she begins to re-evaluate her own lifestyle. Wouldn't it be nice to live as these seven do? Apart from society and its expectations. But groups always have their dynamics and roles. Which are you? And what if you want to change?
Creation Lake
Rachel Kushner
Sadie Smith – a thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of a mysterious elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation tout court.
Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno's idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
Tyler Durden, a charismatic psychopath, starts a fight in a bar’s parking lot that attracts a group of disenchanted men. They start a bare-knuckle fight club with a strict set of rules.
Tyler eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members and forms “Project Mayhem,” a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization …
The Unworthy
Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses
In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister's whip. Seething with resentment, they plot against each other and wait to see who will ascend to the level of the Enlightened – and who will suffer the next exemplary punishment.
Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge.
Then Luca arrives. She, too, is unworthy – but she is different. And her arrival brings a single spark of hope to a world of darkness.
The Girls
Emma Cline
If you’re lost, they’ll find you…
Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed. It’s the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewelry catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful. If not for Suzanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch where they live.
Was there a warning? A sign of what was coming? Or did Evie know already that there was no way back?
Women Talking
Miriam Toews
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped by what many thought were ghosts or demons, as a punishment for their sins.
In response, eight women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their colony, meet secretly in a hayloft to discuss how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. The men of the colony are away in the city attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists – not ghosts, as it turns out, but local men – and bring them home. Meaning the women have two days to make a plan…
