After reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a story inspired by photographs, I realized I had never added this strange and wonderful book to my list. Essentially nothing more than a series of photos and newspaper accounts from the late 19th century, the book depicts a troubled slice of history as it recounts daily life in Black River Falls, Wisconsin and its surrounding areas. The newspaper excerpts tell woeful tales of suicide, murder/suicides, madness and sadness. If anything good ever happened to these people, it never made the pages of The Badger State Banner.The photographs in this book are what really draw you in, and they leave a lasting impression. Taken over a period of 20 years by photographer Charles Van Schaick, they are a unique chronicle of an American town. Ladies in their Sunday-best sit astride horses, miserable looking families pose in front of their tiny homes, while another man mows the lawn of a gorgeous mansion.   A group of men in black face is shown next to a photo of barbers and their customers. My absolute favorite is a happy looking, hatted lady, holding a snake in each hand, with a third draped around her neck.  Most disturbing are the many photos of dead children in their coffins. Perhaps the most poignant is the photograph of a living baby posed with the photos of two dead siblings - a grieving mother's only way to get a family portrait.  It's difficult to look at the pictures here, and not wonder about the lives of the subjects depicted. In fact, this book has inspired at least two novels - A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, and the brilliant, though deeply disturbing, A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan.Originally published in 1973, this book is still in print and readily available. Many of the images can be viewed here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/whsimag...And, a docudrama film has been made, and is available through Netflix.

Take every disgusting thing about monsters, humans, sex, reproduction, rape, sodomy, slavery, torture, and cannibalism, stuff it into a slender book, and voila! you have The Cannibal Within. No depravity is too taboo to include in this mean little book. The story is about two unattractive teens into witchcraft who decide to conjure up some demons in the woods near one's home. They succeed and some transhumans pop up to brutally rape one girl and eat her friend alive.The story is told through the diary of the survivor that details her hellish underworld experiences where she is enslaved as a breeder of transhumans. The babies are born with all manner of defects, and then thrown into crowded, feces-covered cages for two years before they're turned into "baby jelly," meaning they are beaten to a pulp and then devoured as a delicacy. The lucky ones are eaten immediately, sometimes by their own mothers.Transhumans come above ground to hunt for humans to take back to the underworld--some are used as slaves in factories, worked to death in polluted rooms until they are so weak they are devoured while they're still breathing ; some "pig humans" are forbidden to move around and are force fed until they top weights of up to 1600 pounds, and then their skins are used to make leather and parchment and their rendered fat turned into soaps and salves; some are placed in cages in slave markets where they're chosen as food; some women are turned into dairy cows and their ulcered breasts grow so large they can only crawl around, dragging their teats beneath them; some humans are used for entertainment, fighting to the death without weapons--men v. men, dwarves v. women, blind men v. children.All in all a great read for a sicko like me.

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