Published in 2013, it follows middle school teacher Celeste Price, who grooms and molests one of her young male students.

Celeste Price is a beautiful 26-year-old woman who is unhappily married to Ford, an alcoholic police officer from a wealthy family.

The novel opens just before her first day as an English teacher at Jefferson Junior High, where she plans to seduce a student.

She tells him about Ford (leaving out that he is a cop), the rules of their relationship, and states that they can talk only on the burner phone Celeste gave him.

However, her energy at home is drained from dates with Buck, and she becomes more irritated with Ford and refuses sex with him; in response, he insists on masturbating in her presence.

Before Jack leaves Tampa to visit his mother over Christmas break, he tells Celeste that he feels threatened by Buck's interest in her, which she finds humorous.

When Celeste is at Jack's house, Buck returns home unexpectedly and witnesses them having sex, then has had a heart attack.

Jack manages to visit occasionally, but she is uninterested in his emotional troubles and plans to end the relationship.

Boyd is not as shy as Jack and Celeste is concerned about his ability to be discreet, but their sexual relationship progresses rapidly.

The case becomes a media circus, and Celeste publicly plays the role of a young, innocent woman desperate for affection.

One night during the trial, Ford arrives drunk at Celeste's cell to confront her, trying to make sense of their relationship, but she rebuffs him, and he leaves in tears, never seeing her again.

Jack answers questions briefly, crying, while Celeste suppresses disgust at his appearance, which has matured during his year in juvenile detention.

The next day, the prosecution offers Celeste a plea bargain: she is placed on probation for four years, cannot go near a school or spend any unsupervised time with minors, and has to attend group therapy.

A year later, Celeste is given permission to move to a different town, where she gets an under-the-table job at a cabana bar under a fake name.

Tampa is the debut novel of Alissa Nutting, an essayist and creative writing professor whose first book was the 2010 short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls.

Nutting was inspired by Debra Lafave, a Tampa teacher charged with raping one of her middle school students in 2013.

Nutting went to high school with Lafave; seeing someone she knew on the news raised her awareness of the issue of female predators and changed her mind about the reality of underage male rape.