Five-Minute Marriage

'Joan Aiken's invention seemed inexhaustible, her high spirits a blessing, her sheer storytelling zest a phenomenon. She was a literary treasure, and her books will continue to delight for many years to come.' - Philip PullmanDelphie Carteret is forced into a dangerous marriage of convenience in Joan Aiken’s stunning regency romance, The Five Minute Marriage. Perfect for fans of Bridgerton, the major romantic drama series from Netlix.Delphie has been disinherited from her family’s life of luxury and wealth, and as her mother's health and wits deteriorate she has no choice but to seek help from distant relatives. However when she arrives at the family’s grand house she discovers part of their fortune is rightfully hers, and the only way to obtain her inheritance is through a sham marriage to her cousin.Unknowingly Delphie has tangled herself in a web of family rivalry and deceit which goes back for generations. Other members of the family are not just in debt but in the Marshalsea - the debtors' prison described by Dickens. Forced to maintain the charade of her marriage, Delphie is finally drawn into a dramatic fight for her life, and a surprisingly romantic finale on the roof of the family mansion . . .Joan Aiken has woven together an enchanting plot of romance and rivalry that will grip readers till the very end. Fans of Georgette Heyer should definitely make this novel their next read.

Joan Aiken has such fun when she writes that it’s infectious – gloriously exaggerated characters and plot are spiced by a dry wit which forbids one to take anything seriously at all, Joan Aiken is a storyteller par excellence with an educated awareness of nineteenth-century English fiction. The Five-Minute Marriage is an agreeable entertainment in which an aristocratic young lady ends up with a title, a husband and a fortune . . . en route there is a duel on a roof and other pleasing incidents, This lunatic farrago of wackiness is completely typical of Joan Aiken. Funny, fluffy, and utterly absurd, What is Joan Aiken doing back in regency land? Having fun – with the most ingenious Impostures and Deceits, not to mention attempted Murders, practised on a most agreeable heroine. A country dance in the high style twirled to the tune of a proven virtuoso

Joan Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex in 1924, daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken, and started writing herself at the age of five. From the 1960s she wrote full time and published over 100 books. Best known for her children’s books such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place, she also wrote extensively for adults and published many contemporary and historical novels, including sequels to novels by Jane Austen. In 1969 she won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for The Whispering Mountain, followed by an Edgar Allan Poe award for Night Fall in 1972, and was awarded an MBE for her services to children’s literature in 1999. Joan Aiken died in 2004.

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