The Beaumont Bequest — Lynne Jones

When lawyer, Patrick Peto, destroys the will of his uncle, Rex Beaumont, and takes ownership of the Heartsease estate, he sets about destroying all traces of its five-hundred-year Beaumont history. But when he makes a bonfire of the author's unpublished manuscripts, their words come back to haunt him. As Rex's fictional characters conspire to force Patrick to recreate the stories he has destroyed, the author's friend, Barbara Dane, is unwittingly drawn into a plot to restore Heartsease to its rightful owners.