Books like Lost and Found — picked by fans

In 1988, I watched a TV special marking the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Jonestown. Did the producers ask who the dead were? How they’d found the People’s Temple? What they’d hoped for when they’d joined? If so, the answers didn’t stick. Nothing stuck but the heaps of corpses in lurid Technicolor—scenes from a horror film misfiled in real life. No wonder I sealed that story and others like it in a pit marked “evil,” “madness,” “them.” 

In this book, Scheeres shows that many entered the People’s Temple seeking what life outside had so far denied them: comfort, camaraderie, and the chance to serve what seemed a worthy cause. She shows how some fought to survive. She returns a throng of “them” to the ring of human understanding.

After ten years in a political cult, Janja Lalich dove deep into research on Heaven's Gate. Then she set out to explain, in this book, how smart, driven people function under coercive control. 

The gist? While they keep their intelligence and capacity for achievement, they shrink the range within which they act and think.

Lalich's perspective helped me understand why my fellow ex-Zendiks and I had acquiesced to so much dumb shit. We weren't stupid or brainwashed—just trapped by bounded choice.

Also, I was delighted by her account of her own cult's implosion, crystallized in the moment when the leader pulls out a cigarette and no one offers a light. 

Fourteen months after leaving Zendik, still a true believer, I realized that I was not a fucked-up failure—Zendik was one fucked-up place. Then, reading Combatting Cult Mind Control, I saw how Zendik fit the cult pattern. How I'd fallen for yet another tired variation on an all too well-worn scheme.

In this book, Hassan adds to the foundation laid by his first book. Most notably, he lays out ways to approach cult members with curiosity, not judgment. Forget arguing and hole-poking, he says. Focus instead on offering unconditional love and letting them come to their own liberating conclusions at their own pace.

In fictional Union Grove, post-collapse, it takes a cult—the New Faith Church—to sustain a village. Equipped with social cohesion, ecstatic optimism, and shared purpose, the New Faithers come through for their neighbors in surprising and admirable ways.

I love this book because it shows the bright side of cult life. The New Faithers remind me of myself and my fellow Zendiks at our best. For all our failings, we sure did know how to band together to get shit done. 

I found this book extremely important because it finally put to bed the myth that counter-cultural women were merely subservient to their male counterparts, while these women did so much to actually shape the counter-culture.

I recommend reading this alongside Nina Graboi’s criminally neglected autobiography–One Foot in the Future–that serves as a perfect illustration of American women successfully looking for empowerment in these counter-cultural enclaves.

Having read the series out of order, The Cartel was my first Winslow book. His story was so captivating that I needed to go back and read how it all started.

The fact that I could start with The Cartel without having read the origin story is an example of Winslow’s talent. The Cartel is a great stand-alone story, made even better when its two companion books are added together. Winslow has developed compelling characters, and it's enjoyable to watch how they evolve and face new challenges.

This was a wonderful novel that gave me a sense of how cruel the Spanish occupation was in New Mexico in the 1600s. I loved how Anaya adapted Spanish folktales throughout the novel.

The Spanish treatment of indigenous people can be compared to any occupier, even in present times. The main character in the novel is the Governor of New Mexico and his difficulties governing Pueblo Indians and other indigenous tribes who reject the Spanish occupation and the religious beliefs of the Catholic Church. He is a sympathetic character who has just lost his wife and is lonely.

A group of Pueblo Indians are arrested for plotting a rebellion against the Spanish—the punishment is usually harsh: either death or enslavement. One of the conspirators is a fifteen-year-old girl named Serafina, who speaks Spanish well and is a gifted storyteller. She makes a wager with the governor to tell him a… show more.

Addie Ramirez, the main character of Tumble, is the kind of girl who takes charge of her situation—whether it’s searching for her father or meeting new people or speaking her mind about wrestling.

I felt such a personal connection to Addie; she loves her stepdad, but she still wonders about her father and embarks on a journey to find him and get to know him. And along the way, she meets her wrestling family and learns firsthand how powerful women wrestlers can be.

I loved that readers get to see powerful women in a sport traditionally dominated by men!

Old Cold Cannibal is a bit of an outlier in this list, as it doesn’t fully conform to the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett style of humor/narration or plotting. But it’s a unique book with an amazing voice. I have a soft spot for harsh 1800s white narrators whose doubling down on arrogance and (historically accurate) racism wrap around from being awful to weirdly and unsettlingly charming. Old Cold Cannibal delivers on that 100% and allows it to infuse some humor into what is otherwise a very dark and disturbing narrative that follows a journey across the pre-Civil War U.S. to find and slay a dragon. It’s a rough, but entertaining read.

Charnas steps away from the idea of vampires as supernatural creatures. Her protagonist, Dr. Edward Weyland is a natural creature who must feed on blood to survive. He's not always presented as a "good guy" but I still found myself rooting for him as he moved through the story, trying to understand who and what he truly is. This was also one of the first novels I read where the vampire wasn't fabulously wealthy. Instead, he had to make a living as an anthropology professor. His background as a professor also made his quest for self-understanding feel authentic and relatable.