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Harris, Robert. Act of Oblivion. Harper. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063248007. $28.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Robards, Karen. The Girl from Guernica. Mira: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780778309963. $27.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Sexton, Margaret Wilkerson. On the Rooftop. Ecco. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 97800631399612. $28.99. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

West, Catherine Adel. The Two Lives of Sara. Park Row: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780778333227. $27.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

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).

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