Order of Marie Benedict Books

If you’ve ever wandered through a bookstore and picked up a novel that made you question why you never learned about a certain woman in history class, chances are you’ve encountered the work of Marie Benedict. But Marie Benedict isn’t just a historical fiction author—she’s a literary detective of sorts, unearthing the lives of brilliant, silenced, and often overlooked women and resurrecting them with prose that makes you feel like you’re living their lives, one page at a time.

Born as Heather Terrell, Marie Benedict was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, though her exact date of birth has not been widely publicized. And that feels almost fitting, doesn’t it? The woman who gives voice to those forgotten by history keeps a few secrets of her own. But what we do know is enough to prove that she’s every bit as compelling as the women she writes about.

Marie is a graduate of Boston College, where she studied History and Art History, and later earned her law degree from Boston University School of Law. Yes, before becoming a bestselling novelist, she was a high-powered litigation attorney in New York City. It was during those years, buried under legal briefs and corporate jargon, that a question began to haunt her: Why were there so few female figures in the pages of history who resembled the strong, complex women she knew in real life? That question led to a career pivot that changed not just her own life—but the literary landscape for historical fiction readers.

Her transition from attorney to author wasn’t just a career change—it was a mission. Writing under the pen name Marie Benedict, she began to peel back the dusty layers of history and reveal the women whose contributions were overshadowed, stolen, or flat-out ignored by the men around them.

Take Hedy Lamarr, for instance—the Hollywood bombshell who also happened to co-invent a communication system that laid the groundwork for WiFi. Or Clara Kelley, the clever Irish immigrant who worked undercover as a maid in the Carnegie household, influencing Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropic empire. These women had stories that were screaming to be told, and Marie Benedict answered.

Her style is bold, richly layered, and unapologetically feminist. She writes with the determination of someone righting centuries-old wrongs. She does it by weaving fact with fiction so seamlessly that readers are left wondering how they never knew about these women—and eager to Google everything the second they finish a chapter.

Benedict’s novels don’t just tell you what happened; they ask you to consider why it was buried in the first place. With each book, she becomes a literary archaeologist, dusting off truths with tenderness and fire. And the irony? While she writes about forgotten women, she herself has become one of the most recognized voices in historical fiction today.

She continues to write and live in Pittsburgh with her family, proving that sometimes, the most powerful revolutions begin not with a shout, but with a whisper of a story that refuses to be forgotten.

So the next time you open a Marie Benedict novel, know this: you’re not just reading a book. You’re part of a resurrection.