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Micol Ostow · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Special Ones

Em Bailey · 301 pages

"When four young people are taken against their will to become part of a cult, they are worshiped by their followers and become lost in their new reality--but what happens if they rebel against the one holding them captive?"--

CultsPsychological ManipulationYoung AdultDark
❤️

Wicked Girls

Stephanie Hemphill · 408 pages

A fictionalized account, told in verse, of the Salem witch trials, told from the perspective of three young women living in Salem in 1692--Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott, and Ann Putnam, Jr.

Verse NovelPsychological ManipulationYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
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Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer · 438 pages

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkTeen Protagonist
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Tricks

Ellen Hopkins · 627 pages

Five teenagers find themselves stuck in a horrifying wold of sexual slavery

Verse NovelYoung AdultDarkViolent
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The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

Stephanie Oakes · 406 pages

The Kevinian Cult has taken everything from seventeen-year-old Minnow: twelve years of her life, her family, her ability to trust. And when she rebelled, they took away her hands, too. Now their Prophet has been murdered and their camp set aflame, and it's clear that Minnow knows something about what happened that night. As she languishes in juvenile detention, she relives the events that led to

CultsDarkYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
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The Naturals

Jennifer Lynn Barnes · 308 pages

Young Adult thriller book series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes about a classified FBI program that recruits teenagers with exceptional abilities to solve cold cases. The protagonist, Cassie Hobbes, joins other gifted teens, including a profiler and a statistician, in this program. The series combines suspenseful crime-solving with personal danger as the Naturals find themselves in a lethal game of cat a

CultsPsychological ManipulationYoung AdultDark
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Sold

Patricia McCormick · 272 pages

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor, but her life is full of simple pleasures, like raising her black-and-white speckled goat, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather

Verse NovelYoung AdultDarkTeen Protagonist
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Because I Am Furniture

Thalia Chaltas

The youngest of three siblings, fourteen-year-old Anke feels both relieved and neglected that her father abuses her brother and sister but ignores her, but when she catches him with one of her friends, she finally becomes angry enough to take action.

Verse NovelYoung AdultDarkTeen Protagonist
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The Girl behind the Red Rope

Ted Dekker · 336 pages

CultsPsychological ManipulationCult HorrorDark
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The Wave

Morton Rhue, Todd Strasser · 130 pages

A dramatization of an actual classroom experiment in establishing a fascist society. In this account, Laurie tries to persuade Mr. Ross to call off the experiment.

CultsPsychological ManipulationYoung AdultTeen Protagonist
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Long Way Down

Jason Reynolds · 321 pages

National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds's fiercely stunning novel takes place in sixty potent seconds, the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he's going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

Verse NovelYoung AdultDarkTeen Protagonist
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The Brimstone Journals

Ron Koertge · 128 pages

Verse NovelYoung AdultTeen ProtagonistDark
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After the Fire

Will Hill · 464 pages

Father John controls everything inside The Fence. And Father John likes rules. Especially about never talking to Outsiders. Moonbeam is starting to doubt, though. She's starting to see the lies behind Father John's words. Then a fire engulfs life as she knew it, and Moonbeam is forced outside The Fence into a world she does not recognize.

CultsYoung AdultTeen ProtagonistViolent
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Stolen: A Letter to My Captor

Lucy Christopher · 301 pages

Gemma, a British city-living teenager, is kidnapped while on holiday with her parents. Her kidnapper, Ty, takes her to the wild land of outback Australia. To Gemma's city-eyes, the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and there are no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Here, there is no escape. Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to figh

Psychological ManipulationYoung AdultDarkTeen Protagonist
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Into the Light

Aleatha Romig · 352 pages

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkPsychological Thriller
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Creed

Trisha Leaver, Lindsay Currie · 253 pages

When their car breaks down, Dee, her boyfriend Luke, and his brother Mike walk through a winter storm to take refuge in a nearby deserted town called Purity Springs, but in the morning they see the town is populated with a deadly cult and find themselves at the mercy of the charismatic leader, Elijah Hawkins.

CultsYoung AdultDarkViolent
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The Family Upstairs

Lisa Jewell · 464 pages

Jewell has a way with the quietly creepy subgenre of domestic suspense. Her books, this one included, often rely on the kind of passive spying we do on our neighbors and loved ones—the kind of spying that uncovers unsettling secrets. In this book, the heroine, Libby Jones, has reached her twenty-fifth birthday and thus learns what her long-dead parents left to her: a house in London’s chichi Kensi

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkChild Abuse
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Seed

Lisa Heathfield · 342 pages

Pearl has grown up in a commune with several women and two men. She has no idea which ones are her real parents. When she gets her period for the first time it means she will be old enough to be chosen and bear a child with one of the two adult males. They worship Nature and depend on it to provide for them. When a new family arrives, Pearl grows close to the new boy, Ellis, who fills her with sto

CultsYoung AdultTeen ProtagonistDark
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The Girls

Emma Cline · 368 pages

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is

CultsTeen ProtagonistDarkViolent
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Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk · 208 pages

A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the base

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkPsychological Thriller
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The Devil in Jerusalem

Naomi Ragen · 315 pages

Two brothers are admitted to Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital with horrific injuries. Their mother, a young American, devoutly recites Psalms at the bedside, refusing to answer any questions. Brought in to investigate, Detective Bina Tzedek follows a winding path that takes her through Jerusalem's Old City, kabbalists, mystical ancient texts, and terrifying cult rituals, until she finally uncovers th

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkChild Abuse
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Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

Jenna Miscavige Hill, Lisa Pulitzer · 416 pages

Jenna Miscavige Hill was raised to obey. As the niece of the Church of Scientology's leader David Miscavige, she grew up at the center of this highly controversial and powerful organization. But at twenty-one, Jenna made a daring break, risking everything she had ever known and loved to leave Scientology once and for all. Now she speaks out about her life, the Church, and her dramatic escape, goin

CultsPsychological ManipulationDarkChild Abuse
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The Assassin's Blade

Sarah J. Maas · 448 pages

In these five prequel novellas to "Throne of Glass," feared assassin Celaena embarks on daring missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberate slaves and avenge tyranny. In these five prequel novellas to "Throne of Glass," feared assassin Celaena embarks on daring missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, where she fights to liberat

Psychological ManipulationTeen ProtagonistYoung AdultDark
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Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse · 235 pages

"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie. . . ." A terrible accident has transformed Billie Jo's life, scarring her inside and out. Her mother is gone. Her father can't talk about it. And the one thing that might make her feel better -- playing the piano -- is impossible with her wounded hands. To make matters worse, dust storms are devastating the family farm and all the farms nearby. Wh

Verse NovelYoung AdultDarkTeen Protagonist
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