Marie Benedict, the beloved national best-selling author of The Personal Librarian and Her Hidden Genius who tells the historically-based stories of women who made great contributions to society but did not receive acclaim or credit for their efforts will be the guest author and speaker at this year’s Muscogee County Library Foundation Founders Society Gala on Thursday January 19, 2023.
In addition, Ms. Benedict will be giving a free public presentation and book-signing at the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road on Friday, January 20 at 11:00am.
No tickets or reservations are needed for the public appearance. Those interested in attending the Gala should contact the Foundation at 706.243.2705.
Copies of Ms. Benedict’s latest novel The Mitford Affair (available January 2023) as well as a collection of her other titles will be sold at the public event on January 20.
Probing the torrid political climate in the lead-up to World War II and the ways that seemingly sensible people can be sucked into radical action, The Mitford Affair tells the story of the six Mitford sisters — each more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next — as they dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they’ve weathered scandals before, the family falls into disarray when Diana divorces her wealthy husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows her sister’s lead all the way to Munich, inciting rumors that she’s become Hitler’s mistress. The novel follows sister Nancy (an author) and her valiant efforts to stop the Nazis from taking over Great Britain, and the complicated choices she must make between the personal and the political.
Benedict’s previous best-seller Her Hidden Genius tells in novel form the story of Rosalind Franklin, the brilliant scientist whose discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was stolen by her male contemporaries. And in collaboration with author Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian reintroduces readers to Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation as the personal librarian to financier J.P. Morgan.
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator at two of the country’s premier law firms, who found her calling unearthing the hidden historical stories of women. Her mission is to excavate from the past the most important, complex and fascinating women of history and bring them into the light of present-day where we can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions as well as the insights they bring to modern day issues.
She embarked on a new, thematically connected series of historical novels with The Other Einstein, which tells the tale of Albert Einstein’s first wife, a physicist herself, and the role she might have played in his theories. The next novels in this series are the USA Today bestselling Carnegie’s Maid and the New York Times bestseller and Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick The Only Woman in the Room, the story of the brilliant inventor Hedy Lamarr, which published in January of 2019.
In January of 2020, Lady Clementine, the story of the brilliant Clementine Churchill (the beloved wife of Winston Churchill) was released, and became an international bestseller. Her next novel, the Instant New York Times and USA Today bestselling The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, was published in 2020.
Writing as Heather Terrell, Ms. Benedict has also published the historical novels The Chrysalis, The Map Thief, and Brigid of Kildare. Her novels have been translated into twenty-nine languages.