The Adjunct

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.

Maria Adelmann is the award-winning author of the story collection Girls of a Certain Age and the novel How to Be Eaten, an NPR book of the year and Belletrist book club pick. She has written for The New York Times, Tin House, n+1, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, and many other publications, and her work has been distinguished by The Best American Short Stories. Adelmann has lived in Baltimore and Copenhagen and now resides in Philadelphia.