Casebook - Mona Simpson

When an eavesdropping boy sets out to discover the obscure mysteries of his unravelling family, he uncovers instead what he least wants to know: the workings of his parents' private lives. And even then he can't stop snooping.

Miles Adler-Rich spies and listens in on his separating parents with the help of his friend Hector. The boys' amateur detective work starts innocently enough. But in rifling through his mother's dresser and snooping in her online diary, it isn't long before they stumble into the outer reaches of the grown-up's privacy - uncovering powerful information that will affect the family's health, wealth and sanity.

Written with pathos and brilliant imagination, Casebook is an unflinching and very different coming-of-age story from one of America's most gifted chroniclers of modern family life.