STARVATION HEIGHTS

In this true story—a haunting saga of medical murder set in an era of steamships and gaslights—Gregg Olsen reveals one of the most unusual and disturbing criminal cases in American history.

In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary “fasting treatment” of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiting for death. They were not the first victims of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor of extraordinary evil and greed who would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions. As their jewelry disappeared and forged bank drafts began transferring their wealth to Hazzard’s accounts, Dora Williamson sent a last desperate plea to a friend in Australia, begging her to save them from the brutal treatments and lonely isolation of Starvation Heights. STARVATION HEIGHTS: A True Story of Murder & Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen (Crown 2005; Warner 1997), is currently #1 in Health on the New York Times best sellers list (Jan. 2015). Gregg Olsen: I live in rural Washington State (about a mile as the crow flies from Starvation Heights). I've wrapped up my ninth novel -- a serial killer thriller coming out in November 2014. It's called The Girl in the Woods. I've been a guest on Dateline NBC, NPR, Good Morning America, The Early Show, FOX News; CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood, Snapped, Deadly Women, William Shatner's Aftermath, and A&E's Biography. http://greggolsen.com