Lauren D. Woods
  • Home
  • Lauren
  • The Great Grown-up Game of Make-Believe
  • Publications
  • Contact

Lauren D. Woods

The Great Grown-up Game of Make-Believe

Beautifully strange and incredibly satisfying . . . manages to surprise at every turn.

—TGGOMB - Kristen Arnett

The Great Grown-up Game of Make-Believe

Coming on October 21, 2025
Pre-order now from:

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.

Read the Goodreads reviews
Buy it from Barnes & Noble
Listen to it on Audible

Contact Lauren

Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.
Fill out this field

Substack Newsletter

Join Lauren’s newsletter to be informed of new publications, books, events and more…

You may unsubscribe anytime; your email address will never be shared with a third party.

Please enter a valid email address.

©2025, Lauren D. Woods

Privacy Policy

Design by Web4Writers