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!