Mona Simpson, author of Casebook

Sunday, May 25 at 4 pm

At Laguna Beach Books, 1200 S. Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of Anywhere But Here and My Hollywood, a powerful new novel about a young boy's quest to uncover the mysteries of his unraveling family. What he discovers turns out to be what he least wants to know: the inner workings of his parents' lives. And even then he can't stop searching.

Miles Adler-Hart starts eavesdropping to find out what his mother is planning for his life. When he learns instead that his parents are separating, his investigation deepens, and he enlists his best friend, Hector, to help. Both boys are in thrall to Miles's unsuspecting mother, Irene, who is "pretty for a mathematician." They rifle through her dresser drawers, bug her telephone lines, and strip-mine her computer, only to find that all clues lead them to her bedroom, and put them on the trail of a mysterious stranger from Washington, D.C. 

Casebook brilliantly reveals an American family both coming apart at the seams and, simultaneously, miraculously reconstituting itself to sustain its members through their ultimate trial. Mona Simpson, once again, demonstrates her stunning mastery, giving us a boy hero for our times whose story remains with us long after the novel is over.

Mona Simpson is the author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, and My Hollywood. Off Keck Road was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize from the Chicago Tribune. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and, recently, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Simpson is on the faculty at UCLA and also teaches at Bard College.