Secret Garden Books

"A divorced mother's funny, chatty, revealing take on Splitsville-with just enough anguish and sadness to be utterly believable...An unexpected treat here is a vivid portrait of the author's thrice-married, utterly nonmaternal but generous mother...Women going through the pain and turmoil of separation ... (mere)and divorce will appreciate Nestor's candor and wit. Not another slick how-to, but a comforting reminder that life goes on after the spouse is gone." --Kirkus.Check out the author's site here. Join us for a reading and book launch party!

"In the well-written, laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating spirit of Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods, and Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally, Dan White takes us along for a walk on the wild side of adventure and love. I could not put it down." - - Eric Blehm, National Outdoor Book Award winning author ... (mere)of The Last Season.Dan White's humorous and heartfelt memoir, The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost my Mind and Almost Found Myself on the Pacific Coast Trail tracks the journey of Dan and his girlfriend, two inexperienced hikers, as they take on the challenging 2650 mile trail from Mexico to Canada.Dan White is a journalist, explorer, and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Backpacker. He received his MFA from Columbia University and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is his first book.Check out Dan White's blog here.

He was unemployed, seemingly aimless, and 10 years younger than she. Definitely not boyfriend material. She’d come out to the bar with friends that night fully prepared to end up on their couch, but there she was, leaving the bar with him, going back to his place, finding a condom, and realizing the ... (mere)next morning that it had stayed, unopened, on the floor. At 39, intellectual, solo-flying, and nearly broke, Mary Pols got pregnant.Despite many obstacles--not the least of which is the shock of her Irish Catholic family--Mary perseveres and even manages to create a true friendship with the father of her child. With wry and funny prose, Mary takes us from the first drunken night to the first diaper change in this hip and honest story of unconventional motherhood.Mary Pols is a film critic for several Bay Area papers, including the Contra-Costa Times and Oakland Tribune. She was a Knight Fellow at Stanford in 2005-2006 and teaches part-time at U.C. Berkeley. Her son Dolan is nearly four years old.