The girl from Guernica

In Guernica in 1937, Sibi is living with her sisters and mother, apart from her father in Germany. Civil war is waging and their time in Guernica is becoming precarious. An absorbing scene of a terrible bombing brings tragedy to Sibi's family and she forms a kinship with an American OSS officer, Griff, who has taken to making sure Sibi and her sisters are safe. Leaving Guernica for Germany, Sibi walks into an entirely different sort of danger when Nazi officers become interested in her story of the Guernica bombing. Having to lie to the press and the world, Sibi despises the Nazis for what they are making her deny. Becoming a spy to assist Griff with gathering German intelligence is her way of fighting back. Tension builds as the danger increases, and Sibi's relationship with Griff evolves over the years, notwithstanding their separation due to wartime activities. With gripping descriptions of bombings, fearful interrogations, and a blooming love story, Robards (The Black Swan of Paris, 2020) delivers a fantastic, captivating historical romance.

Among the 59 men who signed the death warrant that led to the beheading of King Charles I, Gen. Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Col. William Goffe flee to 1600s New England in an attempted Act of Oblivion when the royalists regain power, pursued by the secretary of the regicide committee, in internationally best-selling Harris's first substantial departure to North America's shores (75,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Robards's The Girl from Guernica, 17-year-old Sibil's mother and sister are killed in the German bombing of Guernica, and with two other sisters she joins her scientist father in Germany, where he works on jet propulsion engines for the Nazis and secretly helps the Resistance (50,000-copy first printing). Having spent their lives rehearsing strenuously On the Rooftop to achieve their mother's dream of stardom, sisters Ruth, Esther, and Chloe--known as the Salvations--are having dreams of their own even as their Black neighborhood 1950s San Francisco resists gentrification in this latest from National Book Award finalist Sexton (150,000-copy first printing). West's follow-up to her striking debut, Saving Ruby King, The Two Lives of Sara features a young, unwed Black mother who flees Chicago for Memphis during the tumultuous Civil Rights era, finding refuge at sweet Mama Sugar's boardinghouse and possible love with schoolteacher Jonas--all of which could be jeopardized by a secret from Mama Sugar's past (75,000-copy first printing).