Laboratories, Inventors & Impossible Machines
Steampunk Romances Where the Invention Drives the Plot
Every era gets the mad scientists it deserves, and the Victorians got theirs in brass and glass. This is a collection about the people who build things nobody asked for and the world isn’t ready for: artificial nerves, aether-powered apparatuses, mechanical limbs wired straight into bone. The romance is real, but so is the science — these heroines and heroes are defined less by what they feel than by what they can engineer, and the plot only moves once the invention does. Cohesive because nearly every protagonist is one (or more) of the following:
🔬 Scientist / Researcher
🔧 Inventor / Engineer
🩺 Experimental physician
🤖 Automaton creator
🛠️ Master mechanic / tinkerer
The Golden Spider by Anne Renwick
Lady Amanda has blackmailed her way into medical school, catching the eye of Lord Thornton, a neurobiologist, with her creation: a clockwork spider engineered to spin artificial nerves. Thornton has his own reasons to be interested — the device might cure his own deteriorating injury — but when it’s stolen and used in a series of grisly experiments on human subjects, he pulls her into his laboratory and his investigation to stop the killer. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble
Beauty and Beastly by Melanie Karsak
Isabelle Hawking, an inventor’s daughter and gifted tinkerer, is shipwrecked with her father en route to study clockwork mechanisms abroad, and washes up alone on a remote island where a cursed castle is home to a community of enchanted mechanical beings. To break the spell holding the island’s reclusive lord captive, she must put her engineering know-how to work diagnosing what’s gone wrong in his clockwork household. Amazon
On the Origin of Unnatural Species by Barbara Russell
Briar is a scientist who studies Unnatural creatures, more at home in her laboratory than in the field alongside other occult agents. But when she discovers Zephyrus, an emotion vampire caged and abused by traffickers, her research instincts override her caution. She frees him, and in a moment of weakness, offers him her own feelings to feed on, and finds herself bount to him by the exchange. Amazon
Her Sky Cowboy by Beth Ciotta
Amelia Darcy is an airship mechanic left with nothing but scrap metal after her inventor father dies attempting to build a device to reach the moon. Entering a contest to design an invention worthy of Queen Victoria’s legacy, she crashes headlong into Tucker Gentry, an American airship pilot with a scandalous reputation, and the two end up chasing a shared obsession: Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary lost ornithopter. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Barnes & Noble
Nights of Steel by Nico Rosso
Bounty hunters Anna Blue and Jack Hawkins are rivals chasing the same target: a reclusive, brilliant inventor with a high price on his head. When a rogue Man O’ War — one of the ether-powered super-soldiers policing the skies — comes after the same bounty with guns blazing, longtime competitors Anna and Jack are forced into an uneasy alliance to protect the inventor and his invention. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Barnes & Noble
Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
Genevieve Lefoux is a brilliant inventor kept indentured at a vampire hive, spending her days in a potting-shed laboratory while nursing a broken heart. When new parlormaid Imogene Hale refuses to be discouraged by her prickly reserve, Genevieve finds her scientific detachment slipping in the face of someone determined to prove her inventions aren’t the only remarkable thing about her. Amazon | Kobo | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble
The Inventor by Theresa Meyers
Marley Turlock is preparing to unveil his latest invention to the Queen at London’s inaugural Aeronautical Exhibition, hoping to win a seat in the city’s most prestigious scientific society. When Lady Persephone starts tinkering with his device uninvited, he discovers a mechanical mind as sharp as his own, one sent to determine whether his invention is good enough to help protect the country. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Barnes & Noble
Heart of Brass by Kate Locke/Kate Cross
Arden, Countess Huntley, has spent seven years as an undercover agent for the Wardens of the Realm, using a mechanical invention of her own that lets her read the final moments of a murder victim’s life — ever since her husband Lucas vanished on a mission. When he reappears, Arden learns he’s been transformed by a rival agency into a memory-wiped assassin sent to kill her. Amazon
Golden Heart by Christine Pope
When Lavinia receives a letter from her eccentric inventor uncle inviting her to his castle in Romania, she jumps at the chance to escape her carefully ordered life. But her uncle’s latest invention has made him a target, and as foreign agents move to seize the technology, Lavinia and his mysterious assistant, Joshua Jones, become the last line of defense between the device and the men determined to steal it. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Barnes & Noble
Mission: Nutcracker by Cecilia Dominic
Fiona Telfair, a skilled tinkerer, watches nutcracker automatons storm a trade-hall masquerade and kidnap a group of fellow inventors, including her own engineer father. Her only hope of getting him back lies with Devon Meriweather, the rail baron who pulled her from the chaos. Together, they dig into the strange aether-powered apparatus behind the attack. Amazon | Kobo | Apple Books | Google Play | Barnes & Noble
Beyond Repair by Catherine Stein
Owen Cassidy’s business is under attack, and a near-fatal assault has left his shoulder rebuilt with gears and wires. Dr. Nora Taylor, the biomechanologist who saved his life and fitted the replacement, refuses to let him charge back into danger before he’s healed, even as she starts wondering if his engineering problems and his heart need the same kind of fixing. Amazon | Kobo | Google Books | Barnes & Noble
Common Romance Tropes & Themes
Women in STEM • Inventor heroes • Scientist heroines • Mad science • Clockwork engineering • Experimental medicine • Laboratory romance • Scientific mystery • Forced collaboration • Rivals to lovers • Slow burn • Hidden laboratories • Secret societies • Spy intrigue • Impossible inventions • Automatons • Victorian innovation
New to Steampunk Romance? Start Here
New to the genre? This beginner-friendly guide highlights beloved authors and classic reads to get you started.
FLOATING THROUGH FICTION
Where Airships, Dirigibles, and Adventure Take Flight in Fantasy and Steampunk
STEAMPUNK FAR BEYOND LONDON
Looking for books set outside the UK and EU?
LONDON AS IT NEVER WAS
A London reimagined-where invention and imagination blur in Victorian and alternate-history settings.
FOR THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SEASON
15 Steampunk and Gaslamp Winter Fantasy Romances