This book is the inspiration for this list! The story of Jim Jones and the People's Temple, this compelling narrative delves deep into the lives of the people the doomed cult, including its charismatic and psychopathic leader.
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Incredible Books About Horrible People
Do you love to hate a protagonist? Have a penchant for the morally ambiguous to downright evil characters of fact and fiction? Try one of these teen books about problematic people. Most of these ebooks are also available in print! #teens #tigard #WCCLS
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20 items
- What if Jack the Ripper sneaks into New York and his very presence turns pious Salvation Army girls into vengeful medusas? This book alternates perspectives between the psychotic serial killer himself and the women who pursue him to avenge the girls…
- This is President Snow's origin story, as well as the origin of the Hunger Games as we know them: Brutal, exploitative media events. Snow is the so-called protagonist, and you won't like him, but you'll be fascinated by his rise in the world of…
- Leave it to the heroes to save the world-- villains just want to rule the world. In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood…
- In this classic gothic horror, Heathcliff is cruel, manipulative, and jealous. And Catherine, who says her love for him "resembles the eternal rocks beneath," and that their souls are the same, is almost as awful. Prove me wrong.
- John Wayne Cheever must fight every impulse in order to avoid becoming like the serial killers he is so obsessed with, but when a body turns up behind a laundromat, John must confront a danger outside himself.
- On the night of their sixteenth birthday, a set of triplet sisters, each born a queen with her own unique magical power, must fight each other to the death with the last queen standing getting the crown. This is a story entrenched in deceit, twisted…
- A post-apocalyptic story, where on one side, Kate's family rules by manipulating people with brutal monsters to control the city, and on the other side, August's family works to destroy the monsters and the corrupt elite. A Romeo and Juliet-esque…
- Part heist, part heart-wrenching coming-of-age novel, this is a new take on "The Goose Girl." An incorrigible thief, 17-year-old Vanja Schmidt's biggest theft was her mistress's life. She's saving to escape and hopefully outrun her bad reputation,…
- Drugged and kidnapped from her parents at the Bangkok airport, English teen Gemma wakes to find herself in the weirdly beautiful but desolate Australian outback. Her only company is her captor, a handsome young Australian named Ty, who is obsessed…
- In this fast-paced, morally gray story of ambition and survival, a bloody competition for control of a powerful well of magic occurs every 20 years. This time, things are different thanks to an anonymous publication that shares all of Ilvernath's…
- In 1924, eighteen-year-old college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb made a decision: they would commit the perfect crime by kidnapping and murdering a child they both knew. How did two teenagers brutally murder an innocent child...and why?
- Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette's desire to escape…
- From the moment of her birth, Elpheba's own mother is embarrassed and repulsed by her bright-green baby with shark's teeth and an aversion to water. But was the Wicked Witch of the West truly born evil, or is there more to the story?
- When Jude Duarte was seven, she watched Madoc, general to the high king of Elfhame, slaughter her parents. Madoc then dragged Jude and her two sisters off to Faerieland, where he raised them as his own. Ten years later, Jude remains an outcast who…
- The story of Ariel, a Middle Eastern refugee who lives with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber, the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century, and a…
- Orphan Jule recounts the last year of her life with her fellow orphan and best friend Imogen, casting herself as the hero of a story that is much more complicated than it seems on the surface. This suspenseful, twisty novel is an homage to Patricia…
- In another biography by an author who has a talent for humanizing history's most infamous characters, the last Tzar of Russia and his family enjoy all their affluence and privilege while poverty rages around them, driving Russia toward revolution.
- In this first book in a trilogy, a girl child is born to Vlad Dracula. At first rejected by her father and always ignored by her mother, she will grow up to be Lada Dragwlya, a vicious and brutal princess, destined to rule and destroy her enemies.
- In this tale of the hopeful girlhood of an infamous villain, Cath dares to dream of the life she wants, opening a bakery with her one true love, even as she unwittingly sets off on the path that leads to her inevitable future as the feared, enraged,…
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