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8 novels about billionaires, secret societies, and the ultra-rich behaving badly

The past few years have produced a surge of novels obsessed with the billionaire class, elite inner circles, and the terrifying ways extreme wealth reshapes morality. These books explore secret societies, inherited influence, cult-like organizations, and wealthy people so insulated from ordinary life that empathy itself begins to erode. Some focus on billionaires chasing immortality. Others examine the emptiness that comes from having unlimited access to pleasure, luxury, and power. Together, they tap into a growing cultural anxiety about what happens when the ultra-rich begin viewing the rest of society as something to manipulate, consume, or control.

If you love dark academia, literary thrillers, cult fiction, and stories about elite power structures operating behind closed doors, these recent novels belong on your reading list.

Salomé by Leslie Baird

Salomé explores what happens when the billionaire class becomes so detached from ordinary humanity that other people begin to look disposable. At the center of the novel is a secretive global network of ultra-wealthy elites connected by technology, power, and a shared obsession with transcending death itself.

These billionaires aren’t satisfied with controlling industries or governments—they want immortality so they may maintain that control forever, even if it means inhabiting the bodies of other people to achieve it. The novel turns extreme wealth into something genuinely monstrous, examining how unchecked privilege erodes empathy until human beings become little more than interchangeable commodities to be used, consumed, and discarded. Read now!

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The Gallery Assistant by Kate Belli: A twisty, sinister thriller with a uniquely New York perspective

Kate Belli’s The Gallery Assistant is a thriller that keeps readers on edge, blending the tension of a murder mystery with the complexity of a city and world forever changed by tragedy. Chloe Harlow, a young gallery assistant in New York, wakes up one morning in November 2001 with hazy memories of the night before—and quickly discovers that an up-and-coming painter and the gallery’s newest artist has been murdered. Pulled between her life in Williamsburg and the high-stakes Upper East Side art world, Chloe is thrust into a dangerous web of deceit, secrets, and deadly intrigue.

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While the story is undeniably gripping, it does fall into the familiar—and sometimes frustrating—trope of a main character holding crucial information back from the authorities. Chloe’s insistence on solving the murder herself, despite having no investigative training and facing serious danger, is occasionally hard to swallow. Her reluctance to report even life-threatening incidents strains believability, though it does drive the narrative tension. A bit more insight into her reasoning could have made these choices feel more grounded.

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