The Five-Minute Marriage is an enchanting regency romance from critically acclaimed author Joan Aiken, whose novels have been compared to Georgette Heyer.

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 * The Daily Telegraph * 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 * The Guardian * This lunatic farrago of wackiness is completely typical of Joan Aiken. Funny, fluffy, and utterly absurd -- Rachel Manija Brown, LiveJournal 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 * Kirkus Reviews *

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 a hundred 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 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature in 1999. Joan Aiken died in 2004.