"Beautifully strange and incredibly satisfying." --Kristen Arnett

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Published: 10/21/2025
ISBN: 9781637681091
Pages: 176