The Official 2010 Recommendation List from NRGM (Part Two)

Molly Fox's Birthday

A successful playwright borrows the Dublin flat of her close friend, the well-known actress Molly Fox. In the course of one day, as she thinks about their friendship, explores Molly's possessions, and speaks to other friends and family, her life is changed by what is revealed.


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

On her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein discovers that she can feel the emotions of others by eating the food they prepare. Far from fantasy, this story about fraught family relationships is filled with insight and tenderness.



The Queen of Palmyra

Thick with the atmosphere of early 1960s racial tension, Florence, an 11-year old white girl in a southern town in the early 1960s tries to understand the emotions and motivations of the people around her, both black and white, from her abusive Klan-loving father to the family of Zenie, her grandparents' longtime black maid.


Room
For five-year old Jack, the only world he knows is Room, where he lives with Ma and endures nighttime visits from Old Nick, their keeper. Ma has made desperate plans to escape from this place where she's been held prisoner, but it's not clear how the bond between mother and child will survive the enormous change.


Safe from the Sea

After years of estrangement, Noah Torr returns to the cabin north of Duluth, MN where his father, now near death, is living in solitude. As father and son move toward a tentative reconciliation, Olaf tells the pivotal story of how he survived the tragic sinking of his Great Lakes ore boat thirty-five years ago.


Up From the Blue

Eight-year old Tillie Harris loves her beautiful, unstable mother, a free-spirited contrast to her distant, harsh father. When the family moves from New Mexico to Washington, DC her mother vanishes, and Tillie turns to outsiders for support and encouragement until she uncovers her father's treachery.