The Teaching

Based on the author’s true-life experience living in a cult . . .

Someone wanted her gone in the worst way.
Raine Harkins believes everything the Teaching tells her—forgiveness is freedom, there are no dead, and there is no dying. She has lived her entire life in the Haven, a small religious community buried in the hills of northern Nevada, and it’s been a good life.

But when she discovers a frightened teenage girl hiding in the forest, everything changes. Raine offers to help the girl, but gunshots ring out, and the girl runs away, never to be seen again. A week later, Raine finds a letter pinned to her cabin door—God doesn’t want you here. Leave the Haven now, before he runs you down.

Raine can’t bear the thought of leaving the only life she’s ever known, but the threatening letters keep coming, and her search for the missing girl leads her down a twisted path, unraveling the truth behind the Teaching. It’s not a good life—there are dead, and people do die.

"A gripping suspense novel set on the remote compound of a bizarre religious community." - Kirkus Reviews

Buy Now to learn the truth behind The Teaching.

T.O. Paine writes award-winning psychological and crime thrillers that keep you up all night. Some of it comes from imagination. Some of it comes from the four years his family spent inside a cult — an experience that lends his fiction an unsettling authenticity readers can feel.

His novels, including The Teaching, The Abduction, and The Crisis, have been honored by the Chanticleer Global Thriller Awards, Literary Titan, BookLife, and Readers' Favorite. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, the Crime Writers' Association, and Sisters in Crime, and holds a master's degree in computer information systems.

When he isn't writing, Paine is usually running — he has finished a marathon in all fifty states and is working through all fifty a second time, and he has survived an IRONMAN, twice. He lives in Colorado with his wife and shares his office with two rescue dogs he calls his muses. Chaz, a pampered cocker spaniel with strong opinions about cookies, and Muñeca, a street dog he brought home from Mexico who, he swears, keeps the bad people in his books away from him so he can write.

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