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See the Ben Hope series by Scott Mariani in order, with every thriller and novella listed, short summaries, series background and advice on the best place to start.

Last updated: December 19, 2025

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Publication Order

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29 books

1

The Golden Library

by Scott Mariani

2024

A missing girl with close ties to Ben Hope vanishes while travelling in China, and he is the only one her family trusts to find her. In hostile territory and allied with an enigmatic local detective, Ben uncovers a secret reaching back to China’s first emperor and the legends around the Terracotta Army.

2

The White Knight

by Scott Mariani

2023

After a vicious attack leaves billionaire Auguste Kaprisky near death and his historic chess set stolen, Ben Hope is asked to investigate. From Miami to the Bahamas, Rome to Berlin, he uncovers a conspiracy tied to the Napoleonic pieces and a cabal willing to kill anyone who gets too close.

3

The Tudor Deception

by Scott Mariani

2023

In 2005 Ireland, newly retired from the military, Ben Hope earns a living rescuing missing children. When approached to investigate two boys who vanished centuries earlier, he initially refuses, then finds himself drawn into a modern bombing, a murdered historian and a deadly plot linked to a pretender to the Tudor throne.

4

The Silver Serpent

by Scott Mariani

2022

In the searing Australian outback, a man disappears and local police shrug it off as another traveller lost to the desert. His family hire Ben Hope and Jeff Decker to look deeper. Bullet casings, a missing map and ruthless hired guns point to a buried secret the wilderness itself is guarding.

5

Graveyard of Empires

by Scott Mariani

2022

After former bounty hunter Madison Cahill vanishes in Afghanistan, Ben Hope heads into a newly fallen country to bring her out alive. Following rumours of a lost city tied to Alexander the Great, he reunites with Jaden Wolf and stumbles into a covert extraction whose success may hinge on one mysterious prisoner.

6

The Pandemic Plot

by Scott Mariani

2021

Recalled to Britain by a family emergency, Ben Hope learns his teenage son Jude has been charged with murder. Determined to clear him, Ben follows clues linking an Edwardian all-female gang, a century-old vendetta and a lethal government experiment that once unleashed disease on its own people.

7

The Crusader’s Cross

by Scott Mariani

2021

Snow is falling over Le Val when a Corsican crime gang storms the compound, thinking Ben Hope is injured and harmless. He fights them off, but friends die and a priceless medieval cross is stolen. Tracking the surviving killer to Corsica, Ben pursues a personal vendetta through the island’s brutal underworld.

8

The Pretender's Gold

by Scott Mariani

2020

Ben Hope rushes to Scotland when his old comrade Boonzie disappears while investigating a suspicious ‘suicide’ and a stash of Jacobite-era gold coins. In the Highlands he faces mercenaries, a deluded would-be Stuart heir and a dangerous hunt for lost royal treasure buried since the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

9

The Demon Club

by Scott Mariani

2020

Life at Le Val finally seems calm until a stranger on a flight presents Ben Hope with a brutal ultimatum. To save the people he loves, Ben must track and kill former SAS teammate Jaden Wolf. Chasing Wolf across Europe, he uncovers a secretive cult buried inside the corridors of power.

10

Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

2019

When the son of a powerful Delhi businessman is kidnapped in the wilds of northern India, his family turns to Ben Hope. The case is tied to the killing of the boy’s brother and a vanished archaeologist, sending Ben into arid mountains where bandits, corrupt officials and buried treasure collide.

11

The Rebel’s Revenge

by Scott Mariani

2019

A holiday road trip through the American South turns nightmarish when Ben Hope is framed for a gruesome murder. On the run from a statewide manhunt, he is drawn into a generations-old vendetta in the Louisiana swamps and must expose the truth before a powerful family silences him forever.

12

House of War

by Scott Mariani

2019

A chance meeting with a terrified young woman on the streets of Paris pulls Ben Hope into a plot involving stolen artefacts and jihadi terror cells. Teaming up with ex-Delta Force operator Tyler Roth, he races from European backstreets to the Caribbean to stop an attack designed to kill millions.

13

The Moscow Cipher

by Scott Mariani

2018

Twelve-year-old Valentina disappears after visiting her father in Moscow, and her wealthy family calls on Ben Hope to bring her home. What looks like a custody dispute hides Yuri’s buried past with the Russian security services, plunging Ben into a deadly struggle in and around the Kremlin.

14

The Bach Manuscript

by Scott Mariani

2017

A visit to his old Oxford college reunion reunites Ben Hope with Nick, now a world-famous pianist. Hours later Nick is murdered and a rare music score vanishes. Ben’s hunt for the killers reveals the manuscript may be a lost Bach work hiding a dark Second World War secret.

15

The Babylon Idol

by Scott Mariani

2017

A sniper’s attempt on a friend’s life convinces Ben Hope that someone wants him dead. The attack ties back to archaeologist Anna Manzini, who is close to locating the legendary Babylon idol. As enemies close in, Ben and Anna race across Europe and into war-torn Syria to keep the relic from a madman.

16

The Devil's Kingdom

by Scott Mariani

2016

Captured in the aftermath of the Star of Africa mission, Ben Hope becomes prisoner of General Khosa, a vicious African strongman. Forced to train child soldiers or see a loved one killed, Ben must sabotage Khosa’s war machine from within and attempt an almost impossible escape.

17

The Cassandra Sanction

by Scott Mariani

2016

A grieving Spanish bartender insists his scientist sister would never have taken her own life. Ben Hope agrees to look into the case and finds three of her colleagues have also died in strange circumstances. Chased by professional killers, Ben uncovers a vast scientific hoax designed to mislead the world.

18

Star of Africa

by Scott Mariani

2016

Someone close to Ben Hope is working aboard a US container ship on pirate-haunted seas off East Africa. When the vessel is hijacked, Ben mounts a desperate rescue. On board lies a priceless object a brutal warlord will slaughter for, dragging Ben into an escalating and deeply personal conflict.

19

The Nemesis Program

by Scott Mariani

2015

When physicist Claudine Pommier is murdered after researching Nikola Tesla’s forgotten experiments, her friend Dr Roberta Ryder becomes the next target. She turns to Ben Hope, and together they follow Claudine’s trail toward a terrifying weapon and a global conspiracy prepared to kill millions to keep power.

20

The Martyr's Curse

by Scott Mariani

2015

Hoping for peace, Ben Hope retreats to a remote monastery in the French Alps. When a team of armed killers storms the abbey and slaughters the monks, he is forced back into war. Clues to a hidden cache of gold drag Ben into a mystery of greed, betrayal and faith.

21

The Forgotten Holocaust

by Scott Mariani

2015

Drifting and drinking in Ireland, Ben Hope witnesses the brutal street murder of journalist Kirsten Hall. Driven by guilt, he follows her research into an English aristocratic family and the Irish Great Famine, a trail that leads to Oklahoma and a modern crime built on historic injustice.

22

The Armada Legacy

by Scott Mariani

2013

Ben Hope’s peaceful life shatters when his former partner Brooke Marcel is abducted on a winter night in Donegal. His search for her links a ruthless kidnap gang to the salvage of a sixteenth-century Spanish warship, sending Ben from Ireland to Spain and Peru in pursuit of a deadly secret.

23

The Sacred Sword

by Scott Mariani

2012

Back in the UK, Ben reconnects with old Oxford friends turned Reverend and Mrs Arundel, only to see them die in a suspicious car crash. Investigating Simeon’s secret research into a mysterious sacred sword, Ben tracks a relic that could rewrite Christian history while a shadowy organisation hunts him.

24

The Lost Relic

by Scott Mariani

2011

A near-accident on an Italian road leads Ben Hope to a young boy and his mother, then into the middle of a massacre at a glamorous gallery opening. A blood-soaked heist for an unassuming Goya sketch leaves Ben framed for murder and chasing the truth through the European underworld.

25

The Shadow Project

by Scott Mariani

2010

At his training centre in France, Ben Hope takes a seemingly simple bodyguard job for a Swiss billionaire targeted by neo-Nazis. The threat centres on a document that could fuel Holocaust denial, pulling Ben into a Europe-wide kidnap plot tied to a sinister wartime experiment.

26

The Heretic's Treasure

by Scott Mariani

2009

Living quietly in rural France, Ben Hope is dragged back into danger when an army friend’s son, an Egyptologist, is murdered in Cairo. Following clues from the victim’s work on the Akhenaten Project, Ben uncovers a hunt for a legendary pharaoh’s treasure and a conspiracy people will kill to control.

27

The Doomsday Prophecy

by Scott Mariani

2009

Planning a quieter life studying theology, Ben Hope agrees to search for his old professor’s missing daughter, biblical archaeologist Zoë Bradbury. Her discovery of a dangerous ancient secret has attracted ruthless enemies, sending Ben from Greek islands to Jerusalem to stop a looming catastrophe.

28

The Mozart Conspiracy

by Scott Mariani

2008

Ben Hope is pulled back into the life of his first love, opera star Leigh Llewellyn, when her brother dies in a supposed accident. Their search through his research on Mozart’s death uncovers a missing letter, a secret Masonic faction and killers determined to keep the past buried.

29

The Alchemist's Secret

by Scott Mariani

2007

Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope now specialises in rescuing kidnapped children, but a dying girl’s family asks him to find a lost manuscript instead. The document may hold the secret of the elixir of life, drawing Ben into a ruthless race across Europe against fanatics hunting immortality.

Series background & context

The Ben Hope novels follow an ex‑SAS major who tries, and repeatedly fails, to leave danger behind. When readers first meet Ben he has turned his back on the regiment and abandoned unfinished theology studies, using his skills instead to find and rescue kidnapped children. It is a job that suits his sense of purpose, but does nothing to quiet the ghosts of his past.

In The Alchemist’s Secret, that work pulls him into a wider hunt for a manuscript said to contain the elixir of life. From there the pattern is set. Each book ties a modern‑day crisis to some fragment of history: a mystery around Mozart’s death, a lost biblical prophecy, an Egyptian treasure, a relic tied to the Crusades, a missing Bach score linked to Nazi crimes. The stakes are often global, but the stories are anchored in small human decisions and the harm people are willing to do for power.

Ben is not a spy in the formal sense, yet he moves through many of the same spaces. One book might see him tracking mercenaries through Italian art galleries, another chasing conspirators across the American South or dodging militias in Africa and the Middle East. Later adventures take him to India, Afghanistan, China and the Australian outback. Wherever he goes, his mix of military training, stubbornness and rough charm tends to make him both useful and unwelcome.

Le Val, his training facility in rural France, becomes a recurring base. There he passes on skills to others and builds makeshift family ties with colleagues and returning characters. The calm never lasts. Friends are kidnapped, framed or killed, and Le Val itself sometimes comes under direct attack, forcing Ben to defend the life he has tried to build.

The series makes heavy use of real locations, historical events and technical detail without demanding a textbook level of knowledge from the reader. Mariani drops in enough context to make the puzzles satisfying, whether he is talking about alchemy, Freemasonry, biblical archaeology, Cold War science or modern terror networks. The aim is always to keep pages turning rather than to lecture.

Shorter works such as Passenger 13, Bring Him Back and The Tunnel fill in earlier chapters of Ben’s life, showing his transition from serving soldier to freelance operator. They offer compact bursts of the same high‑octane mix: close calls, compromised officials, conspiracies that start small and grow quickly.

Across the books, Ben Hope remains a consistent centre. He is capable and often ruthless in the field, but never invulnerable. Injuries, trauma and broken relationships weigh on him, even as he pushes forward. That combination of relentless action and a hero who plainly carries his scars is a big part of why readers keep coming back to see where trouble will find him next.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 29 Ben Hope Books in Order (Complete List 2026)