Secret Stairs, Secret Walks and Secret Stairs East Bay are the best-selling walking guides from Charles Fleming, the Los Angeles Times “LA Walks” columnist and longtime Silver Lake resident. Published by Santa Monica Press, and available online and at local bookstores, each offers 42 self-guided circular walks using the public staircases, hiking trails, city and county parks and back roads. Complete with handy maps and clearly-written instructions, these walks have brought countless thousands of Californians out of their houses and onto their feet to discover the communities around them.

Fleming -- who leads free monthly stairwalks in Los Angeles, announced here and on the Secret Stairs Facebook page – is a veteran Los Angeles-based journalist who has reported as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Variety and Los Angeles Herald Examiner and as a freelancer for Vanity Fair, The New York Times and elsewhere. His non-walking books include the novels Ivory Coast, After Havana and The Studio Kill and the non-fiction books High Concept, My Lobotomy, Three Weeks in October and many others.