The Hanging Tree

 is a tome in Act I of Diablo III. It can be found in The Weeping Hollow just past the New Tristram entrance. The book drops from a skeleton that spawns underneath a tree with three bodies hanging from it and one or more coffins underneath the bodies.

The tree can spawn at any point on the map but seems to like spawning northwest or northeast of the New Tristram entrance. The drop only seems to occur when there is disturbed earth around the tree like in the picture.

It reads as follows:


 * "The cold ground welcomes the foul bodies of these cruel men. They sought to prolong their lives through forbidden magic at great and cruel cost to others. Their evil fed on itself until it consumed them all and they found themselves at the end of a hangman's rope."
 * ~Tristram Magistrate