Thursday, Mar 26, 2026 7:30 PM

Location:
The Imperial
726 W College Avenue 

Decatur, Georgia 30030

A shocking murder at the nexus of Silicon Valley, California surf culture, and the cannabis gold rush exposes the dark side of the legal weed business in this revelatory work of investigative journalism.


A Cappella Books is delighted to welcome award-winning investigative journalist Scott Eden to The Imperial in honor of his new book, “A Killing in Cannabis: A True Story of Love, Murder, and California Weed.” Eden will appear in conversation with Atlanta-based writer and editor Rafi Kohan, award-winning author of “Trash Talk.”

This event is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for purchase.

About the Book

Santa Cruz is one of the country’s surf meccas and a favored getaway of the Silicon Valley elite. For decades, marijuana has been cultivated, consumed, and trafficked in these mountains, one of the most important regions in the country for the crop. It’s where Ken Kesey threw his wild parties, where back-to-the-land types came to live off the grid, and where Tushar Atre, Silicon Valley founder, was found brutally murdered.

Charismatic, ambitious, arrogant, and rich, Atre was the leader among a clutch of tech execs and venture capitalists with a voracious appetite for risk, work, and money, riding waves at dawn and then putting in fourteen-hour days. When he met Rachael Lynch, a maverick cannabis grower and mover of product, he had a vision of how their lives could come together in business and in love. Atre sought to disrupt the newly legal cannabis trade by funding a start-up with black market capital. This illegal pursuit would entangle him with an array of colorful and dangerous characters, many of whom had compelling reason to want him dead.

Award-winning journalist Scott Eden’s panoramic investigation exposes the symbiotic relationship between the legal weed world and its shadowy, illegal counterpart. It is a story of love, greed, and betrayal, set in a world where visionaries, hippies, masters of the universe, and stone-cold killers are all stakeholders, eager to exploit the power of the plant.


About the Author

Scott Eden is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has focused on crime, corruption, injustice, business, science, technology, and the dark side of sports. He’s written for ESPN The Magazine, GQ, Wired, The Atavist, Inc., The Believer, and many other publications, and his stories have been anthologized in “Best American Sports Writing” and in The Believer's best-of collection, “Read Hard.” He is the author of “Touchdown Jesus” (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

About the Conversation Partner

Rafi Kohan is an Atlanta-based writer, editor, and keynote speaker. He is the award-winning author of “Trash Talk,” which explores the deeply ingrained human behavioral impulse to talk crap to one another, and The Arena, which was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Previously, he has served as deputy editor at the New York Observer and as executive editorial director for the Atlantic’s creative studio, Re:think. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including GQ, Men’s Journal, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Atlanta Magazine, The Ringer, and the Wall Street Journal.