The Adjunct

Summary

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 academia’s 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 March

Sam, 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 it’s 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 reasons—and 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 Sam’s downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream.