Roanoke
A Novel of Elizabethan Intrigue
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- £4.49
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
In the spring of 1585, seven English ships sailed around Cape Feare and up the windswept coast of Florida. Their mission: to gain a foothold in the Americas, a gateway to riches, an island fortress against the Spanish. But within ten years, the vibrant new colony had vanished without a trace.…
In Hampton Court, Elizabeth is under siege—surrounded by sycophants, spies, and assassins who stalk her every move. Among those charged with protecting her is a tall, charismatic spy named Gabriel North…and when the queen’s advisers persuade her to send ships to the Americas, North is given a job for which he is perfectly suited: to seduce Roanoke’s Secota princess and gain information about a fabled treasure hidden in the wilderness.
In Princess Naia, North meets a woman who bewitches him utterly—and he soon sees the dangerous deceptions from which his mission was born. As war and calamity crash down on Roanoke Island, Gabriel North becomes a wanted man in a desperate hunt that will lead back across the Atlantic—into a trap set by his enemies, and into a shocking act of treachery that swirls around Elizabeth herself….
With the grace of a master storyteller, Margaret Lawrence brings to life a cast of brave hearts and blackguards, petty criminals and grand schemers, who play their roles in a searing drama of conquest, rule, and rebellion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The author of Hearts and Bones returns with a clunky sea-crossing historical thriller that promises to imagine what may have happened to the lost colony of Roanoke. At the center of this tale is Gabriel North, ordered by the conniving handlers of an aging and cash-starved Queen Elizabeth, who's just survived an assassination attempt, to travel across the ocean in pursuit of the legendary riches that supposedly abound in the New World. But as much as Sir Walter Ralegh and others see Gabriel as a pawn for their bidding, they aren't prepared for Gabriel's eventual alliance with the Secota Queen Naia. Though well researched, the novel suffers from wooden dialogue, is filled with far too many minor characters and fails to deliver a stunning reveal about Roanoke's fate.
