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Also by Lauren D. Woods:

The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe, November 2025
Trade Paperback / e-Book

THE GREAT GROWN-UP GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE
By: Lauren D. Woods

Independently Published
November 2025
On Sale: October 21, 2025
176 pages
ISBN: 1637681097
EAN: 9781637681091
Kindle: B0FN3FBH72
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Women's Fiction | Novella / Short Story

Winner of the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize, these lyrical, haunting stories invite us to question the stories we tell ourselves and to imagine other paths—joyful, whimsical, even absurd—through the world. 

A wife finds herself literally shrinking in her house, day by day; a mother recalls the surreal day when her infant daughter survives a close encounter with a bear; and, inside her lover’s heart, a woman discovers a secret nightclub populated by all the women he’s loved and left. 

In the worlds, Woods conjures, childhood memories ripple through adult lives, and characters test the limits of their self-created realities. The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe urges us to contemplate how we can escape loneliness and heartbreak and live on our own terms.