The STEMinist Novellas Books in Order

The STEMinist Novellas form a trio of short, interconnected romances about three best friends who met in graduate school and never stopped cheering each other on. Each novella focuses on a different heroine, but all three stories share the same universe, recurring side characters, and a love of science jokes.

In Under One Roof, environmental engineer Mara inherits half of a Washington DC row house from her late mentor and moves in expecting a cozy new life. Instead she finds Liam, her mentor’s nephew and a lawyer for a major oil company, already installed in the other half of the home. He wants to buy her out. She refuses. What starts as a war over thermostat settings, fridge space, and principle slowly becomes an unexpected friendship, and then something that looks a lot like a relationship.

Stuck with You turns the spotlight on Sadie, a civil engineer in New York who believes in numbers, rituals, and very little else. After one magical day and night with Erik, an engineer at a rival firm, she discovers his company has landed the client she was desperate to win and assumes he used her. Hurt and furious, she ghosts him. Months later, a power outage traps them in a tiny elevator. With nowhere to go, they are forced to unpack what really happened and whether the connection they felt was ever real.

The final novella, Below Zero, follows Hannah, a NASA aerospace engineer whose dream mission takes her to a remote Arctic research station. An accident leaves her stranded and injured, and the only person willing to attempt a risky rescue is Ian, the man she once slept with, pushed away, and later clashed with over her project proposals. The harsh setting strips away both of their defenses, and the story leans into survival stakes, lingering resentment, and the slow thaw between two very stubborn people.

Across all three novellas, Hazelwood keeps the focus tight on each central couple while letting Mara, Sadie, and Hannah stay present in one another’s lives through calls, texts, and running jokes. The tone is playful and contemporary, mixing workplace frustrations, nerdy references, and explicit but emotionally grounded intimacy.

Because the books are short, the plots move quickly. You get all the familiar romance beats, from enemies to lovers and forced proximity to second chances, in a concentrated form. The novellas can be read alone in any order, but reading them together highlights the way the three stories echo each other and build a little found family of women in STEM.