In-Store: Emily Adrian: Seduction Theory w/ Megan Nolan

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/ptlB1iHEz9w
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

When two married professors tiptoe toward infidelity, their transgressions are brought to light in a graduate student’s searing thesis project.

Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. According to Simone and Ethan, and everyone on campus, their marriage is perfect. That is, until Ethan sleeps with the department administrative assistant, Abigail, and the couple’s faith in their flawless relationship is rattled.

Simone, meanwhile, has secrets of her own. While Ethan’s away for the summer, she grows inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta “Robbie” Green. In Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, confidante, and disciple—or so she believes. Behind Simone’s back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor’s marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may—or may not—be the truth.

Simultaneously provocative and tender, Seduction Theory exposes the intoxicating nature of power and attraction, and is a masterful demonstration of how love and betrayal can coexist.

Emily Adrian is the author of Everything Here is Under Control and The Second Season, as well as the memoir Daughterhood and two critically acclaimed novels for young adults. Her work has appeared in Granta, Joyland, The Point, EPOCH, Alta Journal, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Adrian currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Megan Nolan is an Irish writer based in New York. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was an international bestseller, the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, and nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second, Ordinary Human Failings, was nominated for the George Orwell prize for Political Fiction, the Nero Prize, and the Women's Prize, among others. She is the 2025 Sewanee School of Letters John Grammer Fellow.

Host or Publisher Books Are Magic