Joan Aiken

First comes marriage.

Then comes love.

Then things start to get really complicated.

Desperate to help her ailing mother, Delphie Carteret agrees to a sham wedding ceremony to her cousin, Gareth. Her mother will be guaranteed annuity for life, and Gareth's obligation to marry before his sick uncle passes is fulfilled. The plan is perfect.

But perfect plans usually go awry.

...

Bonnie and her cousin Sylvia, two clever little girls, outwit their nasty governess and show up their wicked guardian in this droll fantasy of nineteenth-century England at the time of the wolf plague.

Jane Austen wrote the untitled fragment that was later called The Watsons in 1803-5, and it was published posthumously in 1871. Joan Aiken, well known for her Jane Austen sequels and children's books, finishes the fragment, introducing a new hero and seamlessly continuing where Jane Austen left off to a satisfying ending for all Austen fans. Emma Watson returns home after 14 years spent with a beloved aunt, whose re-marriage has caused a significant...

Joan Aiken's stories captivated readers for fifty years. They're funny, smart, gentle, and occasionally very, very scary. The stories in The Monkey's Wedding are collected here for the very first time and include six never before published, as well as two previously published under the pseudonym Nicholas Dee. Here you'll find the story of a village for sale ... or is the village itself the story? There's an English vicar who declares on his deathbed...

A young woman from Victorian England finds her life irrevocably changed when she is thrust into the free-thinking circles of Paris as a governess in the home of a Comte and Contessa. Ellen Paget moves to Paris, longing to flout convention and spread her wings in Society. She wants nothing to do with the charming Hon. Benedict Masham, an old family friend who's made it his business to look after her welfare. But when tragedy and scandal force Ellen...