True Confessions : Books: Author Jerry Biederman got a small town to share its secrets. He heard everything from tales of murder to admissions of a pencil thief.

It’s sort of embarrassing--not the kind of thing he likes to talk about, obviously--but Jerry Biederman looks relieved after confessing his little secret: “I get an Easter basket from my parents every year.”

So?

“I’m Jewish, and I’m 33, and I still get a basket,” says Biederman, his eyes widening. “Now that’s a real secret!”

He ought to know.

Last year, Biederman climbed into his car and headed out of Sherman Oaks--destination unknown--searching the byways for a town whose inhabitants would reveal to him their most intimate selves. He found the town--which he will not identify, and which, curiously, has not revealed itself--and in three weeks, he had interviewed enough people to come up with his latest book, “Secrets of a Small Town: The Extraordinary Confessions of Ordinary People” (Pharos, $14.95).

The slim tome is a celebration of just plain folks, on the theory that the secrets of average Joes and Josettes are as compelling as the secrets of people with brand names. It is a tantalizing feast of long-hidden tidbits, some poignant, some hilarious, some devastating.

The confessions are anonymous, but ages and occupations are correct, Biederman says. All he asked of his informants was that they tell him something they have withheld from someone else. “There are some things the entire student body of a high school might know about one kid--but the kid’s parents didn’t have a clue,” Biederman writes in the introduction. “As long as it is kept from someone, it qualified as a secret.”

I had a moped accident. I couldn’t tell my parents, or else they would have taken my moped away. After I crashed, I wore a baseball hat until the wounds on my head had healed. Every single day, I wore a baseball hat, because I had this huge cut on the top of my head. Everybody knew about it except my mom and dad. Luckily it was baseball season.

--Carl, 27, electronics salesman

Biederman found out what any priest could tell you: Confession is good for the soul.

“People didn’t know they would feel better,” said Biederman. “Most of them, I think, thought they would feel worse.

“It’s like when you find yourself sitting on a roller coaster before it takes off, and you think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I think they did it because it was seductive. Being given this opportunity for them was like a one-night stand, the safest sex you could have. . . . To be blunt, that is what entered my mind late one night: sex and ordinary people.”

It was easy to get people to talk, he says. Most people would tell several routine secrets or secrets about someone else before divulging the one they really wanted to get off their chests. His technique was straightforward, says Biederman--”All you have to do is ask.”

He proves it by leaving the interview table at his health club armed only with a tape recorder. Within 20 minutes, he has harvested the secrets of three strangers.

One woman, a wiry blond with rock ‘n’ roll hair, admits she is a ghost vocalist for well-known singers. (Revealing the names of the singers she dubs could cost her her livelihood, she says, so she stays mum on that.) A 35-year-old housewife with soaking hair (she is in the club’s salon) confesses that she was nearly arrested in a telephone credit card scandal in 1975. And a handsome aerobics instructor says that years ago, when he was a lifeguard in Ventura, he once slipped a laxative in the coffee of a colleague he disliked.

I used to suck my thumb. In fact, I sucked my thumb until I was 19. Sucking my thumb became a real problem when I moved into my sorority house. I had to be extremely sneaky to keep my sorority sisters from finding out. I did manage to keep it a secret, and after a while I just stopped sucking it. But I’ve always thought the timing was really strange. I quit sucking my thumb right after I started having sex.

Carol, 40, counselor

Biederman, who works as a computer-graphic designer at the Cal State Northridge student newspaper, comes from a family in which commercial success and book writing are virtually synonymous. His uncle, Irving Wallace, was one of the world’s most-read novelists; his cousins, Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky, collaborated with their father and mother, Sylvia Wallace, on the famous compendium, “The Book of Lists.”

“Secrets” is his fifth book. The others were also novelties. “The Do-It-Yourself Bestseller,” co-authored with Tom Silberkleit, presented beginnings and endings of original novels by best-selling authors like Stephen King and Barbara Taylor Bradford and let readers fill in the middle. There was a similar how-to for romance writers and one that chronicled the real-life first amours of best-selling romance writers.

Even though authorship is not new for Biederman, the reaction to “Secrets” has surpassed anything he has experienced. He has earned more money and more press attention with this book. He has also acquired a groupie, which, contrary to conventional wisdom, hasn’t been so great.

“I gave her my phone number and address because I thought we were developing a friendship, and when I came back to Los Angeles, I was literally bombarded with phone calls and greeting cards from her,” he said.

“I hardly knew this person. And she felt she was falling in love with me. I made an appointment with a psychologist and played him the phone tapes. . . . I said, ‘You know, I’m a little scared.’ And he said, ‘Well, you should be.’ ”

I think I’m a little bit paranoid, but only when it comes to dealing with the United States Post Office. When I go to check if there’s any mail in my PO box, I always think the post office workers see me coming and run to the back room to empty out my box before I can open it. I know this probably doesn’t really happen. I guess I just can’t accept the fact that nobody ever writes me a letter.

Dave, 67, motel manager

Not all the secrets have punch lines. Many were horrible and some were too dangerous even to publish. For instance, two people said they had knowledge about murders. Some were about drug abuse. And Biederman said he was overwhelmed with secrets about incest, rape, molestation and other sexual deviance. To keep the book light, he decided to leave out a lot of the depressing stuff. He included anecdotes about sexual taboos only if there was a lesson or some twist that made the story unique.

Although secrets about childhood thieving are fairly common, Biederman was intrigued by people who carried enormous guilt from such escapades into adulthood.

I stole some pencils once. I must have been in the fourth grade. It was six pencils and I took them out of a drugstore. I walked out and I didn’t get caught. But I felt like, “Oh my God, I’m going to hell and burn for a million years.” I just felt so bad. There was this judgmental authoritarian God out there who would make you pay whether you got caught or not. . . . I was going to pay for stealing. And I couldn’t think of a way to take the pencils back. I really wanted to take them back. Oh God, if they knew, my parents found out, I would be marked forever as a bad person. This was traumatic, totally traumatic.

--Richard, 47, civil engineer

Biederman’s first agent rejected the book because of the secrecy surrounding the town’s identity. He felt the anonymity undermined the book’s authenticity. So Biederman found a new agent, one who agreed that readers enjoy being teased.

Curiously, though, the book has been out for five months and the town has still not publicly identified itself. (His publisher has counseled Biederman that he shouldn’t spill the beans until after the paperback version comes out next spring.) But Biederman’s secret is eating him up. You can tell because he has dropped a few clues:

* The town newspaper has a cow on the cover.

* When the TV show “Hard Copy” asked Biederman to take a crew to the town for a segment on the book, he refused. Instead, he took them to Cloverdale, population 5,000, about 85 miles north of San Francisco. He said it’s similar to the town he used.

* There is a park in the town square with a statue in it.

“Keeping a secret is truly a burden,” he says. “It really is.”