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Susie Dent’s debut novel, “Guilty by Definition” (‎Sourcebooks Landmark), introduces a dictionary editor at Oxford who begins receiving strange messages tied to her sister’s long-ago disappearance.

The lexicographer-turned-sleuth follows clues that draw her into literary puzzles – and unresolved parts of her past.

Read an excerpt below. 

“Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent

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Chapter 3

eidolon, noun (seventeenth century):
a spirit, phantom, or apparition

Martha turned and fled through the crowd, down the wide flight of stone steps, and out into Beaumont Street, looking at nothing but the ground. Three corners later, she found a side road and turned into it. She put her back against the wall and tried to breathe.

She had known there would be ghosts in Oxford. She wasn’t afraid of any headless horsemen or nuns haunting the local ruins; it was Charlie, always Charlie she was afraid would find her. There had been times in the first year after her sister’s disappearance when Martha’s heart would stop as she spotted her through the crowd: the long blond hair, the shapeless cardigan draped over a thin cotton dress. She’d hear a laugh, throaty and sudden, or catch a movement, a walk, a twist in the shoulders, and she’d be certain. Just for a moment. Then the illusion would shatter, and the person she knew to be her sister would resolve into a stranger.

As the years passed, so the ghost of Charlie aged. Now it was women in their midthirties who made Martha stop dead in the streets. In Berlin, once a month perhaps, she’d felt that same flickering certainty before realizing the woman with a child on her lap as she drank a coffee at a sidewalk café was not her sister, just an echo of Martha’s own image of who Charlie might be now, thirteen years after fleeing Oxford and her family.

Martha pressed her palm against the wall behind her. She reminded herself of her therapist’s mantra for the moments when she was in danger of being overwhelmed. What can you see now? The shiny cobbles of the side street, the white brick of the wall opposite. What can you feel? The bricks under my fingers, a breeze ruffling my hair. What can you smell? Cooking oil, the Black Opium perfume I put on this morning.

Her breathing slowed.

She pulled the letter out of her bag again and stared at it. Could it be from Charlie? Impossible. What could this Chorus know? Should she burn it? Throw it in the river? Take it to the police?

Ah, the police. She heard the scrape of her mother’s chair on the kitchen floor as she leaped up at the sound of the doorbell. They had found Charlie’s bike not far from the ring road. Did she hitchhike? How was her PhD going? Martha couldn’t remember their faces, just their hands around tea mugs as they sat at the table, the low rumble of their voices as they talked about stress and pressure. Most runaways come back in time, they’d said. They left literature, helpline numbers, and world-weary sympathy behind them.

Martha realized she was at her own front door. Her body had picked her up and carried her here through the gathering dark. She looked up. All the lights were off; her father must be in bed.

Charlie had been living here when she went missing, taking advantage of the space, their mum’s cooking, and the glow of parental approval while she slogged through her PhD. Martha had just left for university and was starting to experiment with life out of Charlie’s orbit.

As she put her key in the lock, she remembered Alex’s shadow moving across the folded letter at the museum. Now it was Charlie’s. Always here: the shadows of the past thrown against the walls and floors. She pushed open the door….

She took the letter out again and laid it on the kitchen counter while the kettle boiled.

Truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hid long.

     
Excerpted from “Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent. Copyright © 2024, 2025 by Susie Dent. Reprinted by permission of Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks.

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Prince William and Princess Kate are set to experience a major change as a key event approaches in the new year.

The second in line to the throne and the Waleses’ firstborn, Prince George, is turning 13 in 2026 with a new chapter of life. 

The future monarch, currently attending Lambrook School, is expected to enrol at either Eton or Marlborough College for higher education.

Discussing the current feelings of the Prince and Princess of Wales, royal expert Jennie Bond said that the one big issue will be allowing George to use a cell phone. 

She wondered, “I imagine a big question for George will be: is this the year he’s finally allowed a smartphone? We know there are some tensions between George and his parents over this thorny issue.”

Previously, William, in conversation with Brazilian TV, revealed that none of his and Catherine’s children have access to smartphones. But, he shared, “When George moves on to secondary school, maybe he’ll have one with limited access.”

Jennie said to the Mirror, “My money is on him not being allowed a smartphone for a few years yet, but this may be the time for him to be allowed a brick phone – so he can at least keep in touch with his family and friends, like so many young people of his age.”

Notably, the royal commentator also predicted that the future King and Queen will continue to protect their son George as long as they can from the public glare in order to let him understand “his new circumstances, to knuckle down and start studying for important exams and to enjoy his school life.”

Jamie Lee Curtis, before giving her debut breakthrough performance in 1978’s Halloween, was also initially offered to give audition for the popular horror film, The Exorcist.

Producer Ray Stark wanted 12-year-old Curtis to audition for the role of the young, possessed Regen MacNeil in the 1973 classic horror film, but her late mother Janet Leigh turned down the offer.

The Freaky Friday actress recalled, how Stark called her mother to make the request.

She opened, “He called my mom and said, ‘Hey, I’m producing the movie of the book The Exorcist. Will you let Jamie audition for it?’”

“And at the time I was probably 12 and, like, cute and kind of sassy and I had some personality, and I’m sure he saw me at a party and was like, ‘Oh, she’d be funny.”

Jamie revealed on The Drew Barrymore Show that her mother just simply said, ‘No’, thinking that her daughter must experience her childhood first.

She explained, “My mom really wanted me to have – thank God – a childhood, which I understand you didn’t get. You didn’t get that option.”

Today, the 67-year-old feels grateful of her mother rejecting the offer to play the possessed character on-screen.

Later, the role was played by Linda Blair, who played it for two movies.

Reportedly, Scarlett Johansson has signed on for the upcoming reboot version of The Exorcist, which is being directed by Mike Flanagan.