Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Adjunct

The Adjunct

Adelmann, Maria

Hardcover

HumorGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $29.00

ISBN10: 1668089971
ISBN13: 9781668089972
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: Mar 31 2026
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.92
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.38 Depth: 8.67
Language: English
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.

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