Vivien Leigh is best known as the former Mrs. Laurence Olivier; the beautiful but willful Scarlett O'Hara; and the fading southern belle with a tenuous grip on reality, Blanche Du Bois. In life and on the screen, these were her public roles. Walker's excellent biography fills the gaps, giving insights into her private life-into what it must have been like to be Vivien Leigh. Walker (author of Garbo: A Portrait, CH, Mar '81; Dietrich, 1984; and Bette Davis: A Celebration, 1986) is a careful researcher who managed to win the confidence of the right people. His interview subjects include Vivien Leigh's only daughter, Suzanne Farrington; her first agent, John Glidden; and her last husband, Jack Merivale. Vivien is personal without being excessively gossipy, and informative without being pedantic. Walker's book should delight film-goers, theater-goers, and readers curious about prominent people. Leigh's achievements were many, but her personality had its darker side; even her 20 years as half of Britain's reigning theatrical couple ``the Oliviers'' took its toll on her physical and mental health. Amply supplied with photographs of the actress at all stages of her life, Vivien is an engaging book about an engaging figure. Undergraduates and general readers.- J.L. Cohen, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

When Imogen and Anna unexpectedly inherit their grandmother Vivien's ice cream parlor, it turns both their lives upside-down. The Brighton shop is a seafront institution, but while it's big on charm it's critically low on customers. If the sisters don't turn things around quickly, their grandmother's legacy will disappear forever. With summer looming, Imogen and Anna devise a plan to return Vivien's to its former glory. Rather than sell up, they will train up, and make the parlor the newest destination on the South Coast foodie map. While Imogen watches the shop, her sister flies to Italy to attend a gourmet ice cream-making course. But as she works shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best chefs in the industry, Anna finds that romance can bloom in the most unexpected of places.

The Delicate, Passionate World is a fairy tale for thoughtful, sensitive adults loosely based on the tale of Psyche and Eros. While easy and fun to read, exploring desire and love's milestones from this gentle and elevated point of view is intended to take the reader toward the Big Questions of life. A love story can touch your heart. Can it also touch your soul? The Delicate, Passionate World is a fairy tale for thoughtful, sensitive adults. It is a loose retelling in a 20th Century setting of one of the oldest supernatural love stories ever told - that of Eros and Psyche, his mortal love. While easy and fun to read, exploring desire and love's milestones from this gentle and elevated point of view is intended to take the reader toward the Big Questions of life. So be entertained, be swept away, and maybe even find enlightenment ... Six years in the making, this one-of-a-kind self-help love story is ultimately a meditation on the Great Love.

Does one's upbringing affect how their behavior can tilt one way or the other? Can one be traumatized by a part of their life to take the path of good or evil? This novel entails the story of how one can be led into either direction. Wyatt Wonder is the masked avenger, dubbed as the ski mask vigilante by his adversaries, who found his way into fighting the evils of his neighborhood by accident. The big test comes when he goes against the mob boss, Vince Bizarro, and his array of henchmen of Quickie, Concrete, Hands, and Silencer. It's an uphill battle when Bizarro is aided by two corrupt cops. To help Wyatt in his cause is Vivien Clark, the lost girl whose raw temperament can be seen as offensive by many. Both are at the crossroads of their life, with one losing his only known relative and the other trying to find affection and security.

"I woke up to my wife, Nicole, screaming my name in anguish. As I opened my eyes, she rushed into the room. Our twenty-three-month-old daughter Vivien was limp in her arms, foaming at the mouth." With these chilling words, Mike Knox begins Vivien's Rain, the true story of his own harrowing journey into the dark and confusing world of epilepsy and childhood disease. Along with his wife Nicole, Knox is awoken abruptly from the innocent sleep of new parenthood one ordinary night when his toddler daughter experiences her first major seizure. Little does the couple know, it was not Vivien's first. And it would not be her last. Overnight, and over the next several years, this parole agent for the California department of corrrections and rehabilitation-a former prison guard who had worked his way up the ladder while pursuing on the side an avid interest in stand-up comedy-would see his whole life change. That first night, driving frantically, he doesn't even remember the way to the nearest hospital-hadn't been there since their daughter's birth. Thank God for his wife's sense of direction and her cool head under pressure. Going forward, the couple navigates the tortured, uncertain waters of this serious health crisis as a team, fighting hospital red tape, doctors who won't listen, insurance companies with Orwellian policies . . . not to mention the sobering fact of their baby's random and incurable affliction. Vivien's Rain is one family's tale of a daughter's early battle with epilepsy. In confronting the realities of Vivien's health, Mike and Nicole Knox confront their own inner demons as well-his as an adopted child, hers as a biracial woman with significant hearing loss since an early age. Where some couples buckle, Mike and Nicole work together to shore themselves against the unknowable challenge of ill health. In the face of Vivien's needs, they persevere and prevail. "As we would learn, with each seizure it was as if a sudden squall had developed and rained down on her, leaving her in a helpless, hopeless fog. I started to think of the seizures as Vivien's rain. She was like a little girl alone in a boat in a storm, far out to sea. And there was nothing I could do about it. "At one point, in response to my question, Vivien described her seizures. "It feels like when you drink a cherry Slurpee too fast, Daddy. It's raining in my head." "Facing a child's illness is perhaps a parent's most daunting task. Vivien's Rain is one family's poignant story of dealing with epilepsy, the health care system, and their own broken dreams. A compelling and helpful read." --Pete Earley, bestselling author of Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness, and Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison Vivien's Rain is a very clear road map down the path of epilepsy. It is enlightening, harrowing and heartening in equal measure."-- Beverly Archer, actress, Major Dad, and Mama's Family

An award-winning collection from the author of City of Bohane, which was hailed by Pete Hamill as "full of marvels" (The New York Times Book Review) * Short-listed for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award * Winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award * One of last year's most critically acclaimed books in the UK * A Guernica Best Book of the Year * A Library Journal "Best Indie Fiction of 2013" * Dark Lies the Island is a wickedly funny and hugely original collection of stories about misspent love and crimes gone horribly wrong. In the Sunday Times Short Story Award–winning "Beer Trip to Llandudno," a pack of middle-aged ale fanatics seeking the perfect pint find more than they bargained for. A pair of sinister old ladies prowl the countryside for a child to make their own. And a poet looking for inner calm buys an ancient inn on the west coast of Ireland but finds instead rancorous locals and catastrophic floodwaters. Kevin Barry's dazzling language, razor-sharp ear for the vernacular, and keen eye for the tragedies and comedies of daily life invest these tales with a startling vitality. Dark Lies the Island was short-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and as one of the most acclaimed collections in Europe in many years, it heralds the arrival of a new master of the short story.

A sophisticated and suspenseful novel about the poignant lives of two women living in different eras. On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire, an uncompromising young wife and mother obsessed with the glamour of Jackie O, struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless marriage or follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier, in 1919, Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer, is searching for her lover who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By telling the stories of the dead, Vivien not only helps others cope with their grief but also begins to understand the devastation of her own terrible loss. The surprising connection between Claire and Vivien will change the life of one of them in unexpected and extraordinary ways. Part literary mystery and part love story, The Obituary Writer examines expectations of marriage and love, the roles of wives and mothers, and the emotions of grief, regret, and hope.

A heartwarming and playful novel about the ones we love and the ones we lose by the New York Times bestselling author of This Time Next Year What would you do if 'the one that got away' turned up the night before your wedding? Head-in-the-stars Audrey is about to marry down-to-earth Josh. Though they are polar opposites, they have a healthy, stable relationship; Josh is just what Audrey needs. But romance should be unpredictable and full of fireworks, and as the big day approaches, Audrey’s found herself wondering if Josh really is "The One." So, when Josh’s sister shows up to the rehearsal dinner with Fred, Audrey’s "What If? guy"—the man she met six years ago and had one amazing day with—Audrey finds herself torn. Surely Fred’s appearance the night before she is due to get married can’t be a coincidence. And when everything that could go wrong with the wedding starts to go wrong, Audrey has to ask herself: Is fate trying to stop her from making a huge mistake? Or does destiny just have a really twisty sense of humor?

Kai Merlin is heir to her mother’s throne in Atlantis, and she takes her duties seriously, but lately her mind has been on her fiancée Vivien Palmer. After a chance encounter when they were children, meeting again and falling in love proved to be fate, but melding their worlds as they plan their wedding isn’t going to be easy. Vivien has spent her life searching for the secrets she’d always known were hidden beneath the waves, but nothing prepared her for what Kai and her people had successfully kept hidden for eons. She finally has a sense of belonging, but unseen enemies will stop at nothing to conquer and destroy their world—including everything and everyone she holds dear. Below turbulent waves, Kai and Vivien must fight for what is right as life and love hang in the balance.