A KINGDOM STRANGE: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke by James Horn, 2010.

Excellently researched and smoothly written, this reads almost like a novel. Why did dozens of English men, women, and children leave England and voyage to a remote area of the New World? Why was Sir Walter Raleigh so interested in establishing a colony there? And why did it fail? What happened there that caused the disappearance of so many people, never to be explained? Horn does a great job of piecing together the story of the "Lost Colony" from contemporary records and writings, examining and re-examining, and he puts forth his own theory of why the settlement was made and what happened to those Roanoke Island settlers in 1587. Full of great details of seafaring and pirating, Spanish attacks, life at sea and in the new land of Virginia, Indian relations, and intrigues involving Raleigh and others within Queen Elizabeth's court, Horn packs it all in, but does so in a way not to overwhelm the reader. A nicely done, very readable account of one the truly great mysteries in American history.