INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East. It had seemed like an earthly paradise Only eleven months ago, Olivia Lessing r emembered, she had considered her posting to the Garrison Hospital on Miljura Island a piece of good fortune. Now she recognized that the Japanese wartime base taken over by the British and Australians was a small, closed world where daily skirmishes with death heightened the personal conflicts. Or was the disillusion just because her own affair with Commander Hugh Falconer was at a complete standstill!