Ann Benson
©2017 Allegro Photography

Ann Benson is an American fiction author whose fourteenth-century historical trilogy of novels The Plague Tales, The Burning Road and The Physician’s Tale, tell a sweeping decades-long saga of the Black Death. Its stunning effect on the lives of the powerful and the powerless, rich and poor, old and young is brought to life through characters who experience its ravages first-hand. Interwoven through this journey is the quest of a contemporary American physician, who must put a stop to an outbreak that threatens the twenty-first century with equal devastation.

Her fourth novel, the mystery Thief of Souls, brings to life fifteenth-century nobleman Gilles de Rais, the ruthless ruler of a duchy in Normandy, who rode alongside Joan of Arc, all the while concealing a dark and evil secret. His adoring childhood nurse, now a nun and companion to a powerful bishop, must unearth this secret, and is forced to set aside her own emotions in her quest to bring him to justice. Meanwhile, in twenty-first century Los Angles, young boys are disappearing, and Detective Lany Dunbar must find out why.

Currently, Ann is completing a fifth novel, a contemporary fantasy set in post-9/11 New York.

Ann is also a master bead artist whose designs, books and web tutorials on bead work are internationally acclaimed. She is a leading world authority on both bead crochet and bead embroidery. Ann has designed and written instructions for over 1000 beading, crochet, and embroidery designs in her forty-year career as a craft designer. Her library of videos on beading, crochet, and embroidery features dozens of video tutorials that are considered among the best. Ann does all her own writing, filming, photography, animation, narration and post-production, and has produced tutorial videos for other noted bead artists as well.

She and husband Gary Frost divide her time between homes in Florida and Cape Cod.