Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: he’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student.

Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants.

With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, Less Than Angels is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.