Author Eric Stanway’s new horror collection, Cannibal of the Mountains, was released this week. It’s a collection of weird anecdotes from 19th-century Massachusetts. The tales include Oscar Beckwith, who committed murder and cannibalism when a gold-mining scam went wrong; Jesse Pomeroy, who tortured and murdered several young children in Chelsea, and ended up spending over four decades in solitary confinement; Captain Joseph White, who was murdered by his nephews for his inheritance; and Asa Snow, whose tomb in the ghost town of Dana became a grisly tourist attraction.

This collection is lavishly illustrated with archival material. It brings the darker side of Victorian New England to light.

Stanway has published a dozen books including The Old Rindge House, Vintage Blood, and Mysteries of Monadnock.