The author recounts her fourteen years of abuse at the hands of her husband, the drug-addicted eldest son of Sun Myung Moon, and reveals the corruption behind Moon's organization.

    Land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult known as The Church of Eden’s Gate that has slowly been infiltrating the residents’ daily lives in the past years.Mary May Fairgrave, a local barkeep, has lost almost everything to the Church: her parents died in suspicious conditions and her brother, entranced by the cult leader’s charismatic words, has vanished. When the authorities refuse to investigate further, she decides to take matters in to her own hands.Local hunter William Boyd was saved by Eden’s Gate years ago, during the darkest moments of his life. When his duties lead him to cross paths with Mary May, the daughter of one of his old friends, he soon discovers that what is happening in the county is far from what he believed.Within this peaceful valley rife with duplicity and suspicions, nothing is as it seems. It will not be who strikes first, but who strikes last that will decide the fate of every soul within the small town of Fall’s end.

    Cascading with rich, well-developed characters, this true story will capture your soul and imagination as the author reveals how a group of kind-hearted, sincere people are led to embrace this controversial lifestyle in their pursuit of the highest degree of glory. Laced with surprising brush-strokes of humor, this heart-rending saga will take its readers on a journey that outsiders whisper of and shudder about. It answers the question that a polygamist's wife is asked countless times: How can you tolerate sharing your husband?In North America today there are over thirty thousand polygamists. They lead secret lives in their attempt to hide from society and U.S. laws. Their women are taught that obedience, unquestioning acceptance of polygamy, and giving birth to huge families of children to follow in their parent's footsteps will assure them a celestial crown. Few search out truth for themselves, but trustingly follow their prophet. Susan's book deals with this head-in-the-sand ignorance. She too, was one of these women.

    That’s her spin on it. The reality is she’s divorced, jobless, and moving back to her family home in Iowa to keep an eye on her mother, who’s slipping into dementia. Her return stirs up the same unnerving sense of disconnect Hannah has felt since childhood—always the odd girl out, the loner outshone by her two older sisters. Hannah knew the feelings of hurt would come back. But she never expected fear. Because when her mother looks into her eyes and whispers, “You’re not my daughter,” Hannah is beginning to believe it’s not just the rambling of a confused woman.It’s the truth.Now Hannah’s following the trail of a family mystery to the dark coast of Big Sur, where years ago a lie was born—and buried. As frightened as she is to unearth it, Hannah knows this is the last chance she has before her past—and all its terrible secrets—are lost forever.

    Once Tilly--whose condition is deemed undiagnosable--is kicked out of the last school in the area, her mother Alexandra is out of ideas. The family turns to Camp Harmony and the wisdom of child behavior guru Scott Bean for a solution. But what they discover in the woods of New Hampshire will push them to the very limit. Told from the alternating perspectives of both Alexandra and her younger daughter Iris (the book's Nick Carraway), this is a unputdownable story about the strength of love, the bonds of family, and how you survive the unthinkable.

    At thirteen she becomes the child-bride of a Canadian Bishop. His compound is located deep in the wilderness of British Columbia, totally isolated from the rest of the world.When the land developer Richard Bergman buys the property next to the Bishop’s compound, he gets involuntarily drawn into the sect’s secret.

    From religious sects eagerly awaiting the end of the world to modern-day criminal organizations living outside the law, this book sheds some light on the groups who don’t want to be seen.What is it that has driven humans to gather in secret since the dawn of time, to hide their labors from their fellow man? This book goes all the way back to the Iron Age to find out, charting a violent history full of human sacrifices, political killings, zealous priests, and mystic prophets. From underground orders to frenzied death-cults, all kinds of secret organizations are found within, be they on the fringes of society or at the very heart of power. Richly illustrated and full of shocking surprises, this book may make you reassess just what goes on in the shadows.

    In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face once they have been expelled by the sect. Brent Jeffs is the nephew of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the FLDS. The son of a prominent family in the church, Brent could have grown up to have multiple wives of his own and significant power in the 10,000-strong community. But he knew that behind the group’s pious public image—women in chaste dresses carrying babies on their hips—lay a much darker reality. So he walked away, and was the first to file a sexual-abuse lawsuit against his uncle. Now Brent shares his courageous story and that of many other young men who have become “lost boys” when they leave the FLDS, either by choice or by expulsion.Brent experienced firsthand the absolute power that church leaders wield—the kind of power that corrupts and perverts those who will do anything to maintain it. Once young men no longer belong to the church, they are cast out into a world for which they are utterly unprepared. More often than not, they succumb to the temptations of alcohol and other drugs. Tragically, Brent lost two of his brothers in this struggle, one to suicide, the other to overdose. In this book he shows that lost boys can triumph and that abuse and trauma can be overcome, and he hopes that readers will be inspired to help former FLDS members find their way in the world.

    Pio of Pietrelchina has emerged as a figure of immense popularity, attracting fascination, veneration, and also emulation. Padre Pio, who once wrote in a letter, “I am a mystery to myself,” is certainly a mystery to all who know of him. To those who moved beyond mere credulity, he became an inspiration to embrace the fullness of faith. Perhaps that is why his shrine in outlying San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, is second only to the Vatican itself in annual number of pilgrims and why Italian Catholics now report to praying more for St. Pio’s intercession than for that of any other saint. This book is a concise introduction to Padre Pio’s life, especially as compared to the example and journey of his spiritual father, St. Francis of Assisi. If St. Francis is said to be the most popular saint of all time, Franciscan Capuchin Padre Pio is perhaps the most popular saint of our times. Given that he passed only in 1968, it is remarkable to think that such a spiritual “superhero” could exist in our modern age. Through not spared from misfortune, he was spared those things that cloud us from perceiving the world in a truly spiritual way. Perhaps that is why Padre Pio offers us just the message we need to hear.

    What really happened in 1969? In 1999, when Tom O'Neill was assigned a magazine piece about the thirtieth anniversary of the Manson murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Weren't the facts indisputable? Charles Manson had ordered his teenage followers to commit seven brutal murders, and in his thrall, they'd gladly complied. But when O'Neill began reporting the story, he kept finding holes in the prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's narrative, long enshrined in the best-selling Helter Skelter. Before long, O'Neill had questions about everything from the motive to the manhunt. Though he'd never considered himself a conspiracy theorist, the Manson murders swallowed the next two decades of his career. He was obsessed. Searching but never speculative, CHAOS follows O'Neill's twenty-year effort to rebut the "official" story behind Manson. Who were his real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties? Why didn't law enforcement act on their many chances to stop him? And how did he turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's hunt for answers leads him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from the Summer of Love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with cover-ups and coincidences. Featuring hundreds of new interviews and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. In those two dark nights in Los Angeles, O'Neill finds the story of California in the sixties: when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away.

    As her parents pursue their calling to bring the gospel to China's most remote provinces, ten-year-old Henrietta S. Robertson discovers that she has been singled out for a divine calling of her own.Etta is quick to share the news with her dorm mates, and soon even Big Bum Eileen is enlisted in the Prophetess Club, which busies itself looking for signs of the Lord's intent. (Hark.) As rumours of war grow more insistent, so the girls' quest takes on a new urgency - and in such a mystical landscape, the prophetesses find that lines between make believe and reality, good and bad, become dangerously blurred. So Etta's pilgrimage begins.A story of a child far from home and caught between two cultures, In A Land of Paper Gods marries exuberant imagination with sharp pathos, and introduces Rebecca Mackenzie as a striking and original new voice.

    From Rugby League players trying to improve their game, to Hollywood superstars and the depressed sons of media moguls, Scientology has recruited its share of famous Australians. Less known is that Australia was the first place to ban Scientology, or that Scientology spies helped expose the Chelmsford Deep Sleep Scandal. Numerous Australians have held senior posts in the organisation only to fall foul of the top brass and lose their families as a result. Based on years of interviews and research, Walkley Award-winning journalist Steve Cannane tells for the first time the fascinating story of Australia's vital involvement with this powerful, secretive and punitive cult.

    Rachel has always found solace in her beliefs, but now she can’t shake the feeling that her devotion might destroy her soul.

    Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth’s niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who — or what — has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?In an ingeniously structured dual narrative, two separate timelines move toward the same point of crisis. Their merging will upend and reinvent the whole. A subversive ghost story that is carefully plotted and elegantly constructed, Mr. Splitfoot will set your heart racing and your brain churning. Mysteries abound, criminals roam free, utopian communities show their age, the mundane world intrudes on the supernatural and vice versa.

    But when he’s denied Red Sun's resident artist role he believed he was destined for, he starts to imagine a life beyond the gates of the compound...The day Stella and Galliard meet, there is something in the air in their small town. Literally. So begins weeks of pink lightning, blood red rain, unexplained storms... And a countdown clock appears mysteriously above the town hall. With time ticking down to some great, unknowable end they’ll each have to make a choice.If this is really the end of the world, who do they want to be when they face it?