Christmas at Candleshoe — Michael Innes

When an American multimillionaire is keen to buy an Elizabethan manor, she comes up against fierce opposition from a young boy, Jay, and his band of bowmen, who are prepared to defend the manor and its nonagenarian owner against all comers. It seems likely that behind a monumental, seventeenth-century carving, by the hand of Gerard Christmas, lies a hoard of treasure.