An honest, funny, neurotic, and totally gross love child of Mindy Kaling and Mary Roach.

Mara Altman’s volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn’t have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn’t it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it’s like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies.

Divided into two sections, “The Top Half” and “The Bottom Half,” with cartoons scattered throughout, Altman’s book takes the reader on a wild and relatable journey from head to toe–as she attempts to strike up a peace accord with our grody bits.

With a combination of personal anecdotes and fascinating research, Gross Anatomy holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and body parts and shows us the naked truth: that there is greatness in our grossness.

Every day hundreds of human beings board long-haul flights to India on extended breaks from their everyday lives, in search of something seemingly easy to find: themselves. That quixotic quest for understanding has drawn much of the world’s population eastward ever since Buddha first assumed the lotus position, and writer Mara Altman needed to know why. So she flew around the world in search of an answer not only to that mystery but also to the deeper questions that plague all who yearn to define the meaning of life.

What Altman found in her wild, comic 18-day reporting trek across India – a journey that took her on a laborious 37-hour cross-country train trip, onto a mystical flat rock by the ocean in Pondicherry, and eventually into the emergency room of a cut-rate Bangalore hospital – will make you laugh, learn, and ponder. By the end of her epic odyssey, it will also take you unexpectedly and thrillingly close to the pulsing heart of human existence.

After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Mara Altman worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice.

In 2009 HarperCollins published Altman’s first book, Thanks for Coming: A Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm, which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. She has published seven best-selling Kindle Singles, including the number-one best seller Bearded Lady, and has written for New York Magazine and The New York Times.

Mara Altman, author of the number-one Kindle Singles best seller Bearded Lady, turns to the topic of motherhood with touching and uproarious results.

At 32 years old, the recently married author found herself suddenly surrounded by babies, and the expectation of family and friends that she would soon have one herself. Altman’s ambivalence prompted a search for the meaning of motherhood – one that led her to wear a fake pregnancy belly, attend pre-natal yoga classes, debate experts, and even tend to her very own crying plastic baby. Her reporting led to a surprising and uplifting lesson about life, love and the choices we make.

Baby Steps is what to expect when you’re not expecting – a heartfelt and hilarious guide to making the most important decision of your life.

After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Mara Altman worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman’s first book, Thanks for Coming: A Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm, which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. She has published three best-selling Kindle Singles, and has also written for New York magazine and The New York Times.

Mara Altman, author of the bestselling Kindle Single Sparkle, returns to top comic form to address the problem every woman faces but no woman wants to acknowledge: facial and body hair. Her brave, witty memoir gives listeners a rare, honest glimpse into the hidden world of lasers and razors. It begins in childhood, when Altman discovers that hair sometimes grows in unexpected places – and that it’s best to remove it immediately, or risk ridicule from 8th-grade girls. It continues into early adulthood, when romantically inclined men make offhand remarks about her fine coating of fur. From there it’s a hilarious, heartfelt journey from Barcelona to Bangkok in search of a cure, an explanation, and the perfect pair of tweezers.

Last fall, newly-engaged author Mara Altman rejected the showy sparkle of a multi-carat diamond ring, and chose instead a simple, three-figure bauble. But why? There began her reportorial journey to find the true connection of diamonds to marriage – and to love.