Bestselling author Marie Benedict discusses her new book The Queens of Crime in Conversation with NY Times bestselling author Dolen Perkins-Valdez

$44.46 includes a signed copy of the book. Register here.

Presented in partnership with East City Bookshop.

The Queens of Crime by beloved author Marie Benedict (The Personal Librarian, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie) is a genre-bending novel starring Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie that blends classic mystery, historical fiction, and elements of true crime into a page-turning and unforgettable story. Set in London in the 1930s and starring five of the greatest women crime writers of the interwar period, The Queens of Crime is an homage to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction that celebrates women who buck convention and seek justice for themselves—and others.

It’s winter of 1931 and Dorothy Sayers has a plan. She’s a founding member of the Detection Club, an organization meant to help crime writers gain credibility in the literary establishment. She and Agatha Christie are the only women members, yet their male colleagues are determined to limit the role of women in what they consider their exclusive male preserve. Together, Sayers and Christie persuade Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy to join, creating a cohort of women to challenge the status quo—they dub themselves the Queens of Crime. To prove they belong in the pantheon of preeminent crime writers, Sayers proposes they solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

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.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench (2010), Balm (2015), and most recentlyTake My Hand (2022).
Take My Hand was named a MostAnticipated Book of 2022 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere.
The novel was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and named a Top 20 Book of the Year by the Editors at Amazon.
It was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction and the 2023 BCALA Award for Fiction.
The audiobook version of Take My Hand was named a Best of 2022 by Audible.

Books by both authors will be available for sale and a book signing will follow the conversation.

$44.46 includes a signed copy of the book. Register here.