As a sensational celebrity libel trial unfolds, a young woman at the periphery secretly wields the power to make or break the case. But with her own hidden past, will she dare to speak up?
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Philippa Malicka’s In Her Defense, which releases on February 3rd 2026.
Everyone is watching. Only one person knows the truth.
The whole country has been riveted by the trial: Beloved TV star and national treasure Anna Finbow, standing in court, accusing her daughter’s therapist Jean Guest of brainwashing her daughter Mary for her own financial gain. Jean insists Mary’s traumatic memories arise from her upbringing and her time studying at a prestigious art school in Rome; wounds only Jean’s therapy can heal. But as the trial unfolds, it’s Augusta “Gus” Bird, Anna’s former employee—a seemingly insignificant bystander, a nobody—who holds the key to unraveling the tangled web of lies and deceit.
What really happened to Mary in Rome? And if her memories can’t be trusted, how will they ever uncover the truth behind her estrangement? Twisty and propulsive, In Her Defense is a compulsively readable debut for fans of Lucy Foley and Laura Dave.
EXCERPT
GUEST V. FINBOW: DAY ONE
Watch her, Anna Finbow, as she approaches the Royal Courts of Justice in a glossy Land Cruiser. The windows are dark, so it’s not immediately dear who is inside yet, but the photographers sense that, finally, this must be her. Abruptly, they break out of their conversations, turn, and point their lenses, jostling for the right position to take her picture. The car door opens to the sound of cheers and some heckling. A woman in her fifties gazes out.
Pivoting on the leather seat, she raises her chin and slips carefully out of the car, pausing only when an assistant, someone new, passes her phone and a box-shaped handbag. She’s wearing her favorite square sunglasses, and her dark hair is blow-dried firmly in place like a helmet. When her lawyer approaches, Anna greets her with a kiss on each cheek. Together, they link arms.
You must know my old boss, Anna Finbow. Her smile will be familiar from Annas Advent, the festive cookery show-now in its tenth season-that runs throughout December. She will have smirked at you in print from the masthead of the lifestyle column that she pens in the weekend newspaper. Chances are, you’ll own one of Anna’s collectible ceramics somewhere, too. An eggcup, or perhaps even a cereal bowl, in one of her famous designs. Finbow Flora-a cottage-kitsch, filigree pattern of intersecting willow leaves and little daisies-which she glazed onto almost everything she made. Nauseatingly chintz, I always thought, but that’s what Anna’s brand represented. Her name was synonymous with a lost vision of Britain: rosebuds over the door, cricket on the village green, a huge kitchen filled with happy children. A myth, basically. A fiction that Anna’s bitter courtroom feud will soon expose.
There was a time when Anna wasn’t so sweet. She had hellcat years, back in the early nineties, when she was still with Albion. That was her band, which she joined as a singer when she was twenty-four years old and completely off her head. I would feel uneasy as a little girl when I saw her on my parents’ television-an impish, punky muse in flamboyant outfits and penciled-on beauty spots. Witty and outrageous; our nation’s cause for concern.
As I watch her approach the courthouse, I realize that has never changed. There never was a moment, during my brief employment, where I didn’t feel uneasy around Anna. That’s the effect of famous people on those like us. You’re not meant to feel at ease. In their enlightened view, there is always a “them” and always an “us.” Anna’s universe was binary: those who were with her and those who were against. It made her paranoid and suspicious of those whom she surrounded herself with.
Almost everyone. For a short while, she was willing-far too willing-to trust me.
Anna stops to interact with the well-wishers who have gathered along the Strand in the late-September sunlight. I am still awed to see her squeezing hands and signing old photographs, her smile dazzling and mendacious. In the months we worked together, Anna often complained about how this whole legal nightmare had aged her. During the long conference calls with her legal team, she’d drag a jade roller over her face in a panic, as if trying to seal some essence of youthful vitality back into herself She needn’t have worried. Her beauty is resilient, baked into her heart-shaped face and the perfectly symmetrical features which often made me want to sculpt her.
Before long, Anna is bustled away from her fans. Leaving them without a backward glance, she ascends the small flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the courthouse. There, by the great doorway, Anna is joined by her husband, Bonamy. As he bounds up to her, my body stiffens with shame. He’s dressed smartly in a gray linen suit, and yet there’s always something elegantly scrappy about Bon’s appearance, like he’s been sketched with a pencil. He and his wife turn back around for one last photo. For a moment, it’s big waves and cautious, toothless smiles. Everything about their bearing suggests gratitude, then, beneath that: grim defiance. Above the sound of camera lenses dosing, their fans call out, pledging love and wishing them luck. It is a surprise to catch myself saying it, too.
The couple turn, now encircled by police officers. Behind the railings, the crowd loosens; mobile phones are lowered, but I manage to keep sight of them. This is when I notice their hands. Bonarny and Anna are holding each other in the secret way I know they sometimes do. Not the usual palm-to-palm clasp; instead, they are linked by their fingertips, which curl around each other.
Abruptly, the scene ahead of me blurs with tears. I cling tightly to the railing in order to stay upright. This was the special way that Mary used to hold their hands, Anna once confessed, referring to their only daughter. When she was very little, it was the way Mary grasped them, how they all led each other through her early years. It was the family’s secret handshake. When Mary first disappeared, Bonamy and Anna regressed into this childish hand-holding all over again. Just one of many strangely comforting habits the couple fell into almost two years ago, when their dark ordeal first began.
When I first got a job in Anna’s household, she’d talk about Mary as if she were still just an infant asleep in the next room. She went on about how adorable her little girl was. How loved. She spoke of the embroidered Bonpoint dresses Mary wore, and the croquembouche they had delivered from Stohrer each year for her birthday. How Mary had delivered their wedding rings on roller skates, gliding down the church aisle to “Love Me Do,” before reciting a Yeats poem from memory. “Tread softly,” Mary had lisped, aged seven. “Because you tread on my dreams.” Every year at Anna and Bonamy’s wedding anniversary party, Mary would recite it again and bring the house down. I would smile patiently as Anna made me watch the old grainy videos on her phone, and say how much I wish I’d seen the real thing. I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed the strange language that my celebrity boss lapsed into-that instinctive way she talked about her daughter’s childhood, in the present tense.
I’m ashamed now, of how I indulged those nostalgic fantasies. When in reality, Mary is an adult and bitterly estranged from her mother. Their last interaction was almost two years ago and coincided with the same time Mary began seeing Jean Guest, a maverick new therapist. Welsh, mid-fifties, and unlicensed, this is the same woman who dares to sue Anna Finbow in court this week.
When Mary first vanished at the age of twenty-two, devastating letters were penned to those who loved her most. She explained how she would be cutting herself off, dedicating her life to Jean, and that the girl they once knew should be forgotten. But Anna would not forget. She went straight to the internet to tell the world what had happened, warning everyone about the wicked witch who carried her daughter away. Jean Guest quickly retaliated with a lawsuit claiming defamation. Anna countered that she was simply telling the truth. Mary had abandoned her mother and instead taken up her therapist’s cause.
I am dedicating my life to my healing now, Mary had written to her parents, in the brutally cold email she’d sent as she cut herself off. Do not try to find me.
The worst bit of that message, Anna later reflected, wasn’t their daughter’s tone-haunted and angry though it was. Nor was it the way Mary accused her parents of destroying her life and every chance of happiness. It was the fact that she addressed her parents by their Christian names. Anna claimed she was never Anna to Mary. She insisted on Mummy.
By the way, I no longer think of, or refer to, you as my mother and father, Mary wrote in her bitter postscript to the email. Because those are names you earn.
With the couple now inside, the crowds disperse. I pause for a sensible amount of time, then head for the law court steps, passing a group of protesters wielding placards and signs.
A thin man with bright blue eyes pushes a petition toward me, calling for regulation in the therapy industry. Another pamphlet calls out the reckless use of psychedelic drugs by unlicensed practitioners posing as healers. The Finbows have paid these attendants, but still I take a leaflet, burying it deep into my rucksack, which is then taken from me and scanned for chemicals or explosives.
The atrium of the Royal Courts ofJustice is vast and splendidly gothic, like some great hall of a fairy-tale castle. My voice shakes as I give my name at the reception, and then I receive directions to Courtroom Six. When I reach the upper gallery, it is chaos: Court reporters are vying for the best seats, and ushers patrol about, reminding us to sit down so that spaces can be filled. I manage to find one at the back so that my presence won’t be too obvious, but close enough to get a clear view over the dark wooden benches below.
There are only fifteen minutes to go before proceedings will begin, and the atmosphere is turning nervy and airless. An older woman next to me sighs and asks if I think the air-conditioning is malfunctioning. I shrug, but as our arms touch, I notice how cold and damp her skin is. Fanning the air, she admits she’s feeling faint. I rummage in my rucksack for my water bottle and offer it to her. I find it touching when she accepts.
“What’s your connection to all this?” I ask, quietly tucking the bottle away. I glance downward at the woman’s loafers and her expensive handbag, then back up at her lined face. Her brown eyes brim with pain.
“My daughter got involved with this woman, too. Five sessions a week at one point. She ruined her life.”
My voice catches in my throat. ”I’m so sorry-“
She thanks me solemnly. “I used to fantasize so often about her facing justice. But the police never got enough evidence to criminalize her.”
My pulse rises. “What is your daughter’s name?” The woman’s lips tighten. “Oriel.”
For a moment, we fall quiet, watching the remaining spectators take their seats.
“And you?” The woman’s gaze returns and flits over my cropped hair and the antique men’s watch I like to wear. I can feel her trying to get the measure of me. “What brings you to the show?”
There is a pause. I glance around me. “My name’s Augusta,” I say quietly, using my full name, in case any journalists overhear.
“Lucy Ayres.” She extends a small hand. “I take it you know the Finbows?”
“Just a friend of the family,” I say.
Somewhere in the court papers, I am referred to as Anna’s “aide,” but the truth is that I am much closer to her than that. For now, though, I don’t go there.
The woman smiles a faint approval, then straightens in her seat. In the courtroom beneath us, two groups of lawyers bustle in, wheeling suitcases of paperwork. The clock hands skip toward ten. The clerks ready their bundles of evidence. Any moment now, Justice Larkin will appear. Our sensational trial will soon unfold.
Excerpted from In Her Defense: A Novel by Philippa Malicka. Copyright © 2026 by PM Lipton Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
