From the acclaimed author of How to Be Eaten, a fresh take on the campus novel that follows an adjunct professor 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—for readers of Worry, Vladimir, and Less.
Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But 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, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, 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’s reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future—and herself.
With biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a fresh 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. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia, The Adjunct asks: Who really controls the narratives of success, identity, and power?
"This novel is a tense yet witty exploration of the ups and (mostly) downs of adjunct life at the most elite colleges; it will open up discussions about labor rights, institutional stratification, and academia on the whole. . . . Adelmann provides impeccably written prose." —Glamour, "Best Books for Book Clubs in 2026"
"A darkly funny, deeply incisive exploration of academia’s underbelly. Through Sam’s eyes, [Adelmann] exposes the absurd hierarchies and quiet humiliations of academic life with biting wit and emotional precision. Both a campus novel and a social reckoning, The Adjunct holds up an unflinching mirror to the systems that exploit passion in the name of prestige." —Booklist
"This exposé of academia from the perspective of its most vulnerable residents offers a vital message at a time when it’s easy to forget what’s supposed to be at the center of all institutions: people—messy, unpredictable, and filled with fragile hope. A crucial new take on the time-honored tradition of the Campus Novel." —Kirkus Reviews
"A slashing tale of academia’s exploitative gig economy and the aftermath of the #MeToo movement . . . Adelmann takes an unsparing and witty view of academia’s ‘pyramid scheme’ . . . This clever campus novel mischievously inverts John Williams’s Stoner.” —Publishers Weekly
"The status inequities and power dynamics in academia are put on full display in a bleak but satirical way, spotlighting how academia exploits adjunct labor and the seemingly impossible game of catch-up that tenure-track hopefuls are forced to play. Adelmann prompts exploration about who has the power or right to control a public narrative that is eerily apt in the current social climate." —Library Journal
"Adelmann’s frank, sometimes darkly funny novel is a revealing depiction of the professional and personal challenges facing a young adjunct English professor." —Shelf Awareness
