Patrick Barb - Free Library Land Online - Polyamorous

And One Day We Will Die

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 19:50:32 +0200

Celebrate the Strangeness of Being Anything at All

Spotlighting the bizarrely beautiful and beautifully bizarre music and lyrics of indie folk rock band Neutral Milk Hotel, And One Day We Will Die features 22 short stories from the realms of weird, phantasmagoric, and speculative fiction, all inspired by the cult classic songs written and performed by Jeff Mangum and company. From alternate histories where happy endings are allowed and mythological re-imaginings that center love over destruction to awe-inspiring contemplations of the potential in the present and dark and unfathomable future visions, all featured authors selected one song from the beloved Neutral Milk Hotel songbook to use as a springboard for their tales.

Editor and publisher Patrick Barb has assembled a diverse array of authors and tales, with the love of Neutral Milk Hotel acting as connective tissue, solidifying into an all-star album's worth of writing talent....

Split Scream Volume Three

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 15:00:30 +0300

SPLIT SCREAM has a new home at Tenebrous Press! The third volume of editor Alex Ebenstein's acclaimed series is back in print, featuring two novelettes:

So Quiet, So White – Patrick Barb

Roger Grimsby, a small-town curmudgeon known for his '80s horror paperback cover art, believes an ancient, bloodthirsty entity with ties to his family may have reemerged. But how does this connect to his wayward grandson, who prying police detectives and grieving parents blame for a recent knife attack massacre at a nearby summer camp? So Quiet, So White is cosmic folk horror that balances the act of creation through destructive forces, with the Grimsby family at the fulcrum. Prepare for bloodshed, and the beauty found within.

Imago Expulsio (The Red Animal of Our Blood) – J.A.W. McCarthy

Shauna's infatuation with the enigmatic painter she meets at art school escalates into unwavering devotion when she learns about the mercilessly brutal cat...

The Big One

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:55:11 +0200

"Daddy's coming home."

That's the promise Hank, a widowed ambulance driver finishing up his shift in San Francisco, makes to his two kids who are trapped in the ruins of their destroyed apartment building across the Bay in Oakland, after the mother of all earthquakes-the fabled "Big One"-hits California.

Hank and two of his fellow EMTs commandeer the rescue vehicle, racing through the decimated streets in search of a way across the water to save his kids. But as the journey through the disaster's aftermath continues, the first responders come face-to-face with unsettling and disturbing occurrences beyond the expected aftershocks. Suicidal cultists and outbreaks of ultra-violence give way to squirming masses of giant tentacles rising through the ruined roadways, while mutant creatures break into fleeing vehicles in search of human flesh.

All the while, something massive rises from a millennia-long sleep inside the Earth, something...

The Darkness Beyond the Stars

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 09:46:04 +0300

Beyond this rock we call home, horror awaits. Meteors slash through the sky, illuminating terrors beyond our wildest imagination. In the furthest reaches of the coldest cosmic expanse, there are things waiting, whose very existence our minds are not equipped to comprehend.

Can you survive the final frontier?

Featuring 14 stories from some of the best up-and-coming talents in the genre, The Darkness Beyond The Stars is an anthology of space-themed horror that seeks to twist humanity's greatest aspirations into our greatest fears. This intergalactic collection of terror includes: alien flora threatening homesteaders, survivors of a psychic war facing a reckoning aboard a ship escaping Venus, a traitorous scientist is launched from an airlock but doesn't die, a woman waking from hypersleep with no memory—but a very real sense of looming danger, and more.

Editor and author P.L. McMillan invites you to blast off with...

Night of the Witch-Hunter

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 19:50:33 +0200

It's 1999 and Fallen Church, New Hampshire is ready for Y2K. But they never planned for Goodman Pryce.

As the new millennium approaches, outcast teen Josey's school video project for history class inadvertently leads to the resurrection of Pryce, a demonic witch-hunter from the 1600s. As he unleashes puritanical Hell on Earth in her small New England town, Josey must rely on her best friend, an ancestor accused of witchcraft, and the mystical powers inside herself to put an end to the Night of the Witch-Hunter once and for all.

JK-LOL

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 21:47:14 +0200

Ted Hideman is a family man and a renowned tech start up guru.

He's also the notorious impossible-to-track online troll JK-LOL.

When his online persona spills over into the real world, attacking those he's virtually harassed and leaving a trail of bodies from California to Mississippi, the disgraced Silicon Valley wünderkind must abandon the protective anonymity of the online sphere and desperately search for answers in the real world.

As the authorities close in on him, and with the unlikely allyship of a cybercrimes-focused federal agent who's been trying to nail JK-LOL for years, Ted is brought face-to-face with the living embodiments of his vile, hateful speech. Following in the tradition of Black Mirror and Barb's sci-fi/horror novelette Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare, JK-LOL highlights the dark side of tech and how terrifying connectivity can truly be.

Pre-Approved for Haunting

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 08:41:14 +0200

A collection of weird, dark stories and millennial anxieties.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term.

A young couple's reunited with their lost son whose favorite fuzzy bear suit connects him to the ghost of a vengeful mama bear while he's alone in the forest.

A jaded screenwriter can't escape the haunted screenplay that's ruined his career.

A man returns to his small hometown, where the people are gone and the trees have taken over.

A Slasher and Final Girl brother-sister duo match wits and blades against a sentient, dimension-hopping apocalypse at a never-ending summer camp.

From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of...