Marie Benedict Books in Order

In a dual narrative, Daughter of Egypt follows Lady Evelyn Herbert, daughter of Lord Carnarvon, as she helps unearth Tutankhamun’s tomb in the 1920s and reaches back to the reign of Hatshepsut, a powerful female pharaoh nearly erased from history. As Evelyn hunts for Hatshepsut’s missing tomb and fights to keep artifacts in Egypt, both women battle for control over how their stories will be told.

Set in 1930s New York, A Pair of Aces pairs Eunice Carter, Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, with legendary madam Polly Adler. From opposite sides of the law they piece together a case against mob boss Lucky Luciano, relying on a quiet network of women whose testimony could change American organized crime forever.

Lainey Philipps has spent her childhood in a London orphanage, until a mysterious patron sends her to Lovelace Academy, an elite girls’ school full of secrets. Facing snobbery and antisemitism, she discovers a hidden society devoted to women scientists and undertakes a risky mission linked to physicist Mileva Einstein, finding her own courage along the way.

In 1930s London, five leading women of the Golden Age of mystery—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Orczy—secretly band together to solve a real murder. As they investigate the baffling death of a young nurse in France, their literary skills become tools for surviving danger and claiming respect in a male dominated club.

Ruth Nichols wants to be the most celebrated woman pilot in the world, until the arrival of charismatic Amelia Earhart turns rivalry into an unexpected friendship. As the pair help found the Ninety Nines and push aviation’s limits, Ruth must confront envy, loyalty, and the shadow Amelia’s fame casts over her own daring life.

In interwar Britain, the glamorous Mitford sisters flirt with politics as easily as they do with parties. When Diana leaves her husband for fascist leader Oswald Mosley and Unity becomes obsessed with Hitler, eldest sister Nancy must decide whether loyalty to family can survive the danger their choices pose to Britain on the brink of war.

Spanning the years around Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, this novel traces the unlikely friendship between educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Working together, often against fierce backlash, they push for anti lynching efforts, Black inclusion in New Deal programs, and new pathways into power for Americans long shut out of the White House.

British chemist Rosalind Franklin finds freedom in postwar Paris labs, then returns to a hostile London research environment where her X ray photographs of DNA could unlock the secrets of life. As colleagues undermine and exploit her work, she battles illness, institutional sexism, and time itself to claim her place in the story of the double helix.

Belle da Costa Greene, a young Black woman passing as white, becomes the dazzling personal librarian to financier J. P. Morgan in early twentieth century New York. While she builds a world class collection of rare books and art, she must guard her secret and decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for power, security, and love.

Agatha Christie vanishes one winter night in 1926, leaving behind an abandoned car and a furious husband with secrets of his own. As police, press, and the nation search for the rising mystery writer, the story alternates between a hidden confession and the investigation, building toward a bold answer to why she disappeared for eleven days.

During World War II, codebreaker Osla Kendall spends her days deciphering Axis messages and her nights devouring mystery novels. A hidden signal in Agatha Christie’s latest book pulls Osla into an unlikely alliance with the reclusive author and a web of wartime espionage.

Clementine Churchill steps into marriage with Winston knowing his destiny lies in politics, not peace. Told in her voice, the novel follows her from Edwardian drawing rooms through two world wars as she manages crises, shapes speeches, and quietly influences decisions that will define Britain, even while wrestling with the cost to her children and herself.

In this historical novella, eighteen year old Elizabeth Morris moves through British occupied New York society, listening as enemy officers speak freely in front of a woman they barely notice. Recruited into George Washington’s Culper Ring as the mysterious Agent 355, she risks her life and her heart to help expose a dangerous traitor.

Young Jewish actress Hedy Kiesler is forced into marriage with a powerful Austrian arms dealer and becomes a silent witness to secret meetings as the Nazis rise. After a daring escape to Hollywood, she reinvents herself as Hedy Lamarr and secretly works on a radical weapons technology, fighting to be seen as more than a beautiful face.

Desperate to escape poverty, young Irish immigrant Clara Kelley assumes the identity of a missing servant and becomes lady’s maid in the formidable Carnegie household. As she earns Andrew Carnegie’s trust, her sharp eye for business quietly nudges him toward a life of philanthropy rather than ruthless profit.

Physics prodigy Mileva Marić leaves Serbia to study in Zurich, where women in science are rare and closely watched. There she falls for fellow student Albert Einstein, and the novel imagines how their partnership, marriage, and sacrifices may have shaped his early breakthroughs.