The Women's Knitting
and Sci Fi Club
pub date: 5/18/2027
ISBN 979-8-90274-042-1
“Burleson has written a rollicking page-turner guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Did I mention you’ll spend much of that chair time laughing? ”
The Women’s Knitting and Sci-Fi Club is a witty, warmhearted novel about aging, friendship, and the radical power of being underestimated.
Margret lives in a small house in the country above a beautiful, busy bike path on a small river perfect for floating down on hot summer days. While she loves her Garden of Eden-like surroundings, the tourists drive her nuts, whether it’s making noise, littering, or behaving like idiots at the Amish farmers’ market in town.
Question is, how long can she stay there? Margret, seventy-five, is not getting younger. Her son, the sheriff, wants her to move to town so she can be closer to him and his wife. She’s not so sure about moving, but she sure has been lonely since her husband passed away ten years ago.
However, Margret also has a secret: her weekly knitting club with her good friends Dot, Rebecca, Vera, and Sage isn’t just about yarn and gossip. The five have been writing sci-fi books together. What started as a lark has turned into a wildly successful series featuring a swashbuckling hero, published under the pen name Rod Reaper. It’s their secret, and that anonymity has worked just fine.
Until now.
Rod Reaper has been invited to receive a major award at a Las Vegas sci-fi convention—an honor that could mean massive book sales and even a movie deal. There’s just one problem: Rod Reaper must appear in person. The solution? Convince Nick, their enthusiastic “number one fan,” to impersonate Rod Reaper, give a short speech, sign some books, and disappear quietly. Simple enough.
What could possibly go wrong?
Homer is what. Homer is a delusional, psychotic super fan of the villains in the books. When he hears that in the next book his race of Amish-looking aliens will be defeated, he decides to stop Rod Reaper by any means necessary.
Margret and her friends, their slippery agent Meyer, Nick the stand-in, plus Homer all set out for Las Vegas and the sci-fi convention, where culture clashes, cos-play, and calamity all await.
In the spirit of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Thursday Murder Club, it’s a fast-paced farce that is memorable, surprising, and laugh out loud funny.
“As a comic novel, The Women’s Knitting and Sci-Fi Club does not skimp on comedy. Nor does author William Burleson skimp on setting or character; richly bringing to life a small Minnesota town and a group of women who defy society’s expectations/limitations. This is a lively, engaging novel full of laughs and heart.”
“A delightfully affectionate portrait of feisty Midwest ladies of a certain age who haven’t quit angling to make their mark. Echoes of Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions with a rural knitting club taking over where Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut’s science fiction wannabe hero, left off.”
“When five rural Minnesota women try their collective hand at writing science fiction, they find that literary success comes with unanticipated consequences. One reader has such strong opinions about their Time Crack novel series that he is prepared to commit murder to bring about his desired denouement. By turns suspenseful, funny, and poignant—a thriller, a send-up of sci-fi conventions, and a tribute to the power of friendship and to resilience in the face of aging and loss. The Women’s Knitting and Sci-Fi Club is that rare accomplishment, a page-turner with heart.”