From the author of How to Be Eaten, a darkly funny, deeply incisive (Booklist) take on the campus novel that follows a woman on the edge gigging her way through academias poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser, whose new novel might be about her. A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2026 * Tense...Witty...Impeccably written. Glamour, Best Books for Book Clubs 2026 * A unicorn...Truly thought-provoking. Bustle, Best New Books of MarchSam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore, takes a last-minute position at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, she lives in a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications for an ever-dwindling number of tenure-track jobs. Her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus. Tom and Sam have a complicated history, and its the last thing she wants to think about as she navigates academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasonsand his long-awaited second novel is about a professor reckoning with his checkered past. As rumors spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story. An entertaining, provocative (Brooklyn Rail) look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia, The Adjunct offers a bold twist on a tangled MeToo story and turns Sams downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream.
