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All Scot and Bothered (2020) |
 | Kerrigan Byrne |
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This is another romance novel set in the 19th century featuring a female mathematician. It features such lines as:
She had very few innate talents, but the rhythm and structure of sexual relations... (more) |
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The Bed and the Bachelor (2011) |
 | Tracy Anne Warren |
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Although it involves cryptography and the Napoleonic wars, this novel is really more of a romance than it is historical fiction or espionage.
Sebastianne Dumont is the daughter of a French mathematician... (more) |
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Bonnie's Story: A Blonde's Guide to Mathematics (2013) |
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| Janis Hill |
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Bonnie wakes one morning to find an unusual stranger named Rogan taking pictures of street signs near her home. Despite the apparent implications of being "a blonde", Bonnie is sufficiently well-versed... (more) |
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Bread & Kisses (2010) |
|
| Katherine Fitzgerald (writer and director) |
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In this wonderful short film, a mathematician desperately trying to correct a hole in a proof falls in love with a baker. He uncharacteristically begins taking baking lessons from her but returns to... (more) |
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Break Your Heart (2015) |
|
| Rhonda Helms |
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The cultural diversity in this romance novel about the affair between an African-American math major and her Japanese cryptography professor is a pleasant surprise, but that is just about the only positive thing I can think to say. It does not seem to have anything interesting to say about either mathematics or academia. They are just the backdrop for a forbidden erotic encounter. (more) |
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Calculating the Speed of Heartbreak (2023) |
|
| Wendy Nikel |
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Normally, I don't like works of mathematical fiction that use mathematical terminology and notation to discuss romantic relationships. They often involve groan-inducing formulae like "Pat + Sandy = Love".
However,... (more) |
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Catch the Lightning [Lightning Strikes Vols. I-II] (1997) |
|
| Catherine Asaro |
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A 17 year-old girl from Los Angeles finds herself in a sexual/romantic relationship with a not-quite-human time-traveller in this book which continues the author's "Skolian saga".
The story is actually... (more) |
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Christmas at Cardwell Ranch (2013) |
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| B.J. Daniels |
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In keeping with my expectations of a Harlequin Romance novel, Christmas at Cardwell Ranch does have an improbable love affair, between a modern-day cowboy and a female mathematician. However, this one... (more) |
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The Code for Love and Heartbreak (2020) |
|
| Jillian Cantor |
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In this young adult adaptation of Jane Austen's "Emma", a high school student unsuccessfully attempts to use her knowledge of mathematics to create a matchmaking app for her classmates. It is yet another... (more) |
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The Countess Conspiracy (2013) |
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| Courtney Milan |
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This is a romance novel set in Victorian England in which the heroine is a biologist studying inheritance and the hero is her friend who publishes and presents her work in his name. The story begins... (more) |
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Crash Course in Romance (2023) |
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| Je Won Yu (director) / Hee-Seung Yang (writer) |
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A grocery store owner and a "celebrity" math teacher fall in love in this South Korean TV series. Each episode’s title is mathematical, and we get to see Choi Chi-yeol being treated like a rock star... (more) |
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The Dark Lord (2005) |
|
| Patricia Simpson |
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This fantasy/horror/romance novel features as its protagonist a young, female math professor at UC-Berkeley who gets caught up in a battle with a demon when she finds an unusual deck of tarot cards in... (more) |
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Duke with Benefits (Studies in Scandal) (2017) |
|
| Manda Collins |
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A romance novel with a strong female lead, Lady Daphne Forsyth, who is a mathematician with some stereotypical anti-social traits. She has been set the task of solving an old mystery by breaking a cipher. However, since this is a romance novel, she is unsurprisingly distracted by a certain hunky guy, the "duke" of the title, whose family owns the library containing the cipher.
(more) |
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Eternal (2021) |
|
| Lisa Scottoline |
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While living under the fascist regime of Mussolini in pre-war Rome, a Jewish prodigy attends university mathematics classes taught by Levi-Civita and forms one vertex of a "love triangle". The romance and the impact of anti-semitism on academia receive equal attention in this serious work of historical fiction from an author better known for light fare. (more) |
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The Givenchy Code (2005) |
|
| Julie Kenner |
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You've got to love the tag lines for this book: "A heel-breaking adventure in code-breaking that will bring out the math geek and the fashionista in you". "Cryptography is the new black".
A woman with... (more) |
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Gödel Incomplete (2013) |
|
| Martha Goddard (Writer and Director) |
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A 21st century physicist repeatedly travels back in time for short visits to the 20th century as a result of her experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. For completely unexplained reasons, she always... (more) |
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The Hurricane (2016) |
|
| R.J. Prescott |
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A British novel in which a shy math student, damaged by her past, begins an unlikely romance with a powerful boxer. "Hurricane" O'Connell is handsome, muscular, and dangerous, but also happens to be madly... (more) |
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Imaginary Numbers (2020) |
|
| Seanan McGuire |
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Sarah Zellaby, a running character in McGuire's InCryptid books, is featured prominently in this entry from the series. Sarah's species evolved from insects in another dimension but look essentially like... (more) |
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The Infinite Pieces of Us (2018) |
|
| Rebekah Crane |
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Esther's family moves from California to New Mexico after she becomes pregnant while still in school. The main focus of this young adult novel is on her personal relationships (with the baby's father,... (more) |
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Invisibly Breathing (2019) |
|
| Eileen Merriman |
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Felix Catalan, a teenager whose autistic tendencies make him unpopular in school, becomes romantically involved with another student whose stutter similarly makes him an outcast.
Like many other anti-social... (more) |
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The Italian in Need of an Heir (2020) |
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| Lynne Graham |
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Maya is a beautiful British "maths whizz" who, if she had her way, would be working in an academic job doing research. She also is usually unwilling to put up with men who boss her around. But, her... (more) |
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The Kiss Quotient (2018) |
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| Helen Hoang |
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Stella is an woman with autistic tendencies who falls in love with the gigolo she hires to help her overcome her problems with intimacy. This romance novel, we are told, was inspired by the true life... (more) |
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Lady Claire is All That (2016) |
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| Maya Rodale |
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Claire Cavendish is a rare item in 19th century England, a woman whose primary interests lie within mathematics. Rather than making her an object of desire, however, her insistence on talking about maths... (more) |
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The Lady's Code (2006) |
|
| Samantha Saxon |
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The third in a series of romance novels about intelligent, confident women, The Lady's Code features Lady Juliet Pervell, who has ruined her reputation in social circles but earned an honorary degree in... (more) |
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The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (2019) |
|
| Olivia Waite |
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Lucy Muchelny is responsible for the mathematical aspects of her father's famous publications in astronomy, but as this is the 19th century she receives no credit for that contribution. Desperate for... (more) |
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The Love Formula (2023) |
|
| Giulia Clerici/Giulia Pasqualini |
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this Italian graphic novel contains three different tales of romance. Each one is written to resemble a different geometric relationship between lines and curves: being parallel, being asymptotic, and... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra (2008) |
|
| Shin Takahashi / Iroha Inoue |
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Reiji wants to learn karate and he is in love with a girl named Misa. So, it works out perfectly when it turns out that her big brother who is the captain of the karate club agrees to let Reiji into the... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis (2005) |
|
| Shin Takahashi / Iroha Inoue |
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Like other books in the "Learn with Manga" series, this one uses romance and manga styling to teach an advanced mathematical subject. Moreover, as in The Manga Guide to Statistics, the main character... (more) |
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The Manga Guide to Statistics (2004) |
|
| Shin Takahashi |
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Rui wants to learn statistics not because she is interested in the subject but because she has a crush on Mr. Igarashi, whom she hopes her father will hire as her tutor. When instead her father hires... (more) |
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The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021) |
|
| Lev Grossman |
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This short film is based on a short story by Lev Grossman is a repeat-the-same-day romcom that uses 2D projections of a tesseract as a plot point! I liked it even if it’s a little handwavy, and math... (more) |
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Midnight Diner (Episode: Omelette Rice) (2016) |
|
| Joji Matsuoka (Director)
/ Marina Oshima (Screenplay) |
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Each episode of this Japanese TV series follows the stories of some patrons of a Tokyo diner that is only open from midnight to 7AM. "Omelette Rice" is a love story between two regulars who meet there... (more) |
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The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) |
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| Barbra Streisand (director) / Richard LaGravenese (Writer) |
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Love story with Jeff Bridges and Barbra Streisand as math and English
professors (respectively) at Columbia University in which they try (unsuccessfully) to achieve a marriage of deep companionship but... (more) |
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Miscalculations (2000) |
|
| Elizabeth Mansfield |
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This romance novel features female "math whiz",
hired to help an attractive millionaire handle his wealth. Of course, they fall in love.
If you have read this book and can correct/add to the description above,
please write to me at kasmana@cofc.edu.
(more) |
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The Number of Love (The Codebreakers) (2019) |
|
| Roseanna M. White |
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This novel may fall into an unlikely combination of categories (it is a wartime religious historical romance spy story that is also mathematical), but its main character is a familiar stereotype: Margot... (more) |
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The One Plus One (2014) |
|
| Jojo Moyes |
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The title presumably primarily refers to the couple in the romance: Jess (a single mom struggling to make ends meet by working as a cleaning woman) and Ed (a well-off client of hers, facing charges for... (more) |
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Onto Infinity (2002) |
|
| David Alex |
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A young mathematician and his older wife struggle to accept her fate as she slowly dies of cancer.
As you might guess since I maintain a website on mathematical fiction, I am not one of those who see... (more) |
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A Perfect Equation (The Secret Scientists of London) (2022) |
|
| Elizabeth Everett |
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Miss Letitia Fenley wishes to compete for the prestigious Rosewood Prize for Mathematics. Unfortunately, she is distracted from her research by her role in a secret society of female scientists in Victorian... (more) |
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Principles of Emotion (2024) |
|
| Sara Read |
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Meg Brightwood grew up as a mathematical prodigy with an overbearing mathematician father and an absent mother. She later quit her academic job due to a combination of her crippling anxiety and the sexism... (more) |
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Proof Geometric Construction Can Solve All Love Affairs (2017) |
|
| Takahashi Manbou (lyricist) / Ane Manbou (illustrator) |
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This is not a short story or novel or movie, it is a music video by Japanese musician "Manbo-p" (featuring manga-style illustrations by his sister). As the title implies, it is a romance in which a boy... (more) |
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The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss (2021) |
|
| Amy Noelle Parks |
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In this young adult romance, Evie Beckham is an extremely anxious teenager who loves math and attends a STEM magnet school. She is starting to get interested in dating, but is unaware that her longtime... (more) |
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Roten av minus én [The Square Root of Minus One] (2006) |
|
| Atle Næss |
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There are three different levels of reality in this novel: On the one hand it is the story of Terje Huuse, a Norwegian mathematician undergoing a midlife crisis. That part of the story is presented through... (more) |
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A Season of Flirtation (2023) |
|
| Julia Justiss |
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Lady Laura Pomeroy's interest in mathematics makes her an unsuitable romantic interest in the 19th century:
Few gentlemen, himself included, could view as a prime matrimonial candidate a female who... (more) |
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The Smithsonian Institution (1998) |
|
| Gore Vidal |
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In the year 1939, a 13 year old orphan known only as "T." is recruited into a secret project to build a nuclear weapon
after he is recognized by his algebra teacher as a math genius. From that description,... (more) |
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A Study in Seduction (2012) |
|
| Nina Rowan |
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From the back cover: "A heart divided...a passion multiplied...a love unequalled."
Although you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, I could guess from the image of a shirtless man with no chest hair... (more) |
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The Sum of All Kisses (2013) |
|
| Julia Quinn |
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Lady Sarah Pleinsworth and a mathematician who was crippled in a duel are forced to spend time together. Since they despise each other at the outset, we know from the typical plot arc of the romance novel... (more) |
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Unlocked (2012) |
|
| Courtney Milan |
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In this novella the heroine's mother is an amateur astronomer computing the orbit of a comet. She has no recognition from professional astronomers. She is invited by her fellow upper class ladies... (more) |
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The Use of Geometry in the Modern Novel (1956) |
|
| Norman Clarke |
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A slightly humorous short story written as a “how to?” piece. The author asks if a story can be written to reflect a geometrical theorem,
“translating this meager framework into a well piece... (more) |
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Zenn Diagram (2018) |
|
| Wendy Brant |
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In many ways, this is a typical teen romance novel: it is filled with girls talking about their crushes, some flirting, some kissing, star-crossed lovers overcoming an obstacle to be together, and just... (more) |
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