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Murder at Teal's Pond by David Bushman and Mark T. Givens

  • Lost City Books 2467 18th Street Northwest Washington, DC, 20009 United States (map)

Join us in welcoming David Bushman and Mark T. Givens in discussing Murder at Teal's Pond!

About Murder at Teal's Pond:

A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive mysteries in the history of television and film.

In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities—a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew?

Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty?

The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that’s ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired.

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David Bushman, a longtime TV curator at The Paley Center for Media, is the author of Conversations with Mark Frost, Twin Peaks FAQ, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer FAQ. He is an adjunct professor of communications arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey, as well as a former TV editor at Variety and program director at TV Land. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Mark T. Givens works as a consultant for the federal government and is the creator and host of the Twin Peaks-centric podcast Deer Meadow Radio (www.deermeadowradio.com). He lives a sometimes strange and wonderful life with his wife and three children in Pennsylvania, where he is brainstorming ideas for his next book.

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This event will be held up two flights of stairs. Lost City Books does not have an elevator. The event will also be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!

Murder at Teal's Pond will be available at Lost City Books!