Her death was the culmination of a brief, brilliant life lived in the shadow of clinical depression—a condition exacerbated by her tempestuous relationship with mercurial poet Ted Hughes. The ensuing years saw Plath rise to martyr status while Hughes was cast as the cause of her suicide, his infidelity at the heart of her demise.For decades, Hughes never bore witness to the truth of their marriage—one buried beneath a mudslide of apocryphal stories, gossip, sensationalism, and myth. Until now.In this mesmerizing fictional work, Connie Palmen tells his side of the story, previously untold, delivered in Ted Hughes’s own uncompromising voice. A brutal and lyrical confessional, Your Story, My Story paints an indelible picture of their seven-year relationship—the soaring highs and profound lows of star-crossed soul mates bedeviled by their personal demons. It will forever change the way we think about these two literary icons.

    In southwestern Taiwan the Dutch establish a trading settlement; in Nagasaki a boy is born who will become immortalized as Ming dynasty loyalist Koxinga. Lord of Formosa tells the intertwined stories of Koxinga and the Dutch colony from their beginnings to their fateful climax in 1662. The year before, as Ming China collapsed in the face of the Manchu conquest, Koxinga retreated across the Taiwan Strait intent on expelling the Dutch. Thus began a nine-month battle for Fort Zeelandia, the single most compelling episode in the history of Taiwan. The first major military clash between China and Europe, it is a tale of determination, courage, and betrayal – a battle of wills between the stubborn Governor Coyett and the brilliant but volatile Koxinga. Although the story has been told in non-fiction works, these have suffered from a lack of sources on Koxinga as the little we know of him comes chiefly from his enemies. While adhering to the historical facts, author Joyce Bergvelt sympathetically and intelligently fleshes out Koxinga. From his loving relationship with his Japanese mother, estrangement from his father (a Chinese merchant pirate), to his struggle with madness, we have the first rounded, intimate portrait of the man. Dutch-born Bergvelt draws on her journalism background, Chinese language and history studies, and time in Taiwan, to create an irresistible panorama of memorable characters caught up in one of the seventeenth century’s most fascinating dramas.

    Pieter Schoorl listened to the heavy iron doors of a basement cell in the Gestapo's Amsterdam headquarters close behind him.  It had been easy for him to hide the first Jew—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed three-year-old.  And had Dr. Schoorl and his wife Anne helped only the one child, this would be a far simpler story.  But the pleas for help never ended.  Dutch commandoes met at the Schoorls' kitchen table, and shot-down Allied pilots shared breakfast with their five children.  Jews continually arrived at the Schoorls' farm unannounced in the dark of night.  The couple eventually filled their two homes with “guests.”  When there was no room left, they searched the countryside for more hiding places.   Nearly seven decades later their American grandson, Nicholas Briejer, travels to Europe in search of the grandparents he did not know.  Through the memories of Piet and Anne’s elderly children, he discovers not only their secluded farm, but the qualities of the heart that drove the couple to—in the words of his grandfather—do “what any man should.”