Ava Gardner, The Secret Conversations, is a book about a writer trying to write a book about Ava Gardner. In 1988, Gardner was recovering from a pair of strokes that had left her with a limp and immobilized one side of her face. She was sixty-five years old, nearly broke, and living as a recluse in her London apartment. The damage from her strokes had ended her acting career, and it looked like her last shot at earning money was to write a memoir.

Peter Evans, a veteran London journalist, was assigned to be her ghostwriter. This book chronicles Evans’ many intimate conversations with the actress. By then, Gardner was an alcoholic suffering the ill effects of decades of heavy smoking.

Stephen Galloway’s Truly, Madly describes the long and tragic arc of one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary love affairs. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh fell in love while each was already married to someone else. Each had a child, and neither was suited to parenthood or fidelity.

Olivier’s first wife, Jill Esmond, seemed to recognize early on the intensity of the Olivier-Leigh bond, and what it meant for her marriage. She told their son, Tarquin, “I have seen true passion only once. God help you if it gets a hold of you. There’s nothing to be done.”