The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Mysterious Benedict Society is a novel by the American writer Trenton Lee Stewart, illustrated by Carson Ellis and published in 2007 by Little, Brown Young Readers. It is the first book of a series.

Reynie Muldoon lives at an orphanage in the city of Stonetown with his tutor, Miss Perumal, when he answers an advertisement that promises something unusual to children clever enough to qualify. The tests he and the other applicants are put through are odd, and the four who pass them are an unlikely group: Reynie, George Washington, who is known as Sticky, Kate Wetherall, and Constance Contraire. Their host, Mr Benedict, explains the situation he has been investigating. Messages are being transmitted into people's minds through ordinary television and radio signals, and they are coming from an institution called the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, run by a man named Ledroptha Curtain.

The children's task is to enrol at the institute as pupils and find out what is being done there, which means working undercover in a school where the staff are watching for exactly that. The series went on to sell more than three million copies.