The reason you're having a problem is you don't have a margin-top specified on the p selector, so the default margin is what's being used, which is larger than .2em. If you were doing a conversion the look and feel options I mentioned before would fix this, but I suspect that you didn't actually attempt to convert the document to mobi/ePub...
Try this:
Spoiler:
Code:
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dd, dt, p, pre, table, th, td, tr, {margin: 0; padding: 0em; }
p {
text-indent: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.2em;
margin-top:0.2em;
}
p.chapter
{
text-indent: 1.5em;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 2em;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top: 5em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}
p.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
span.centered
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
}
p.title
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 4em;
page-break-before: always;
margin-top: 5em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}
p.author
{
text-indent: 0em;
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 3em;
margin-top: 0em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p class="title">The Boyne Walk</p>
<p class="author">by FR Higgins</p>
<p class="chapter">More lake than river</p>
<p>Only last week, walking the hushed fields of our most lovely Meath, now thinned by November, I came to where the road from Laracor leads to the Boyne river—that seems more lake than river—stretched in uneasy light and stript of reeds. And walking alongside an old weir of my people’s, where nothing stirs—only the shadowed leaden flight of a heron up the lean air—I went unmanly with grief, knowing how my father, happy though captive in years, walked last with me there.</p>
<p class="chapter">Heart breaks</p>
<p>Yes, happy in Meath with me for a day he walked, taking stock of herds hid in their own breathing; and naming colts, gusty as wind, once steered by his hand, lightnings winked in the eyes that were half shy in greeting old friends—the wild blades, when he gallivanted the land.</p>
<p>For that proud, wayward man now my heart breaks—breaks for that man whose mind was a secret eyrie, whose kind hand was sole signet of his race, who curbed me, scorned my green ways yet increasingly loved me till Death drew its grey blind down his face.</p>
<p>And yet I am pleased that even my reckless ways are living shades of his rich calms and passions—witnesses for him and for those faint namesakes with whom now he is one, under yew branches, yes, one in a graven silence no bird breaks.</p></body>
</body></html>
The new line is margin-top:0.2em;