Those Fantastic Lives is available for purchase now. Here are some of the best sites to use, including ones to my two favorite indies and my publisher:

Publisher’s Synopsis:

“Prepare to be transported to the edge of the world in Bradley Sides' affecting and haunting debut collection of magical realism short stories, Those Fantastic Lives. In Sides' tender, brilliantly-imagined collection, a young boy dreams of being a psychic like his grandmother, a desperate man turns to paper for a miracle, a swarm of fireflies attempts the impossible, scarecrows and ghosts collide, a mother and child navigate a forest plagued by light-craving monsters, a boy's talking dolls aid him in conquering a burning world, and a father and a mother deal with the sudden emergence of wings on their son's back. Brimming with our deepest fears and desires, Sides' stories examine the complexities of masculinity, home, transformation, and loss. Bradley Sides is an exciting new voice in fiction, and Those Fantastic Lives, which glows with the light of hope and possibility amid dark uncertainties, will ignite your imagination.”

REVIEWS:

“Best Southern Books of October 2021” at Southern Review of Books

Book You Should “Read This Halloween” at Electric Literature

Title Story Featured on LeVar Burton Reads

“Those Fantastic Lives is full of cinematic confections and concoctions. In deceptively buoyant prose that never sinks under the weight it carries, these stories are scary and funny and thrilling, sometimes all at the same time. I don't know if we should take this collection as a series of warnings, but being doomed has never been so enjoyable.”

-Josh Denslow, author of Not Everyone is Special

"Bradley Sides' debut collection, Those Fantastic Lives, is a treasure chest of dark wonder, one that brings to mind the best of Joe Hill and Ray Bradbury. It's perfect company for a stifling August night, or a rainy April morning, full of lovely places to get lost for a little while."

-Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters

 “Urgent and energetic, frequently exuberant and always entertaining, this debut collection of stories is indeed just what we need right now: a fantastic array of fantastic fiction, in both quality and content.”

-Fred Leebron, author of Six Figures and Welcome to Christiania 

“These exquisite but unsettling stories examine the fraught relationship between fear, love, and hope. Individually, they show Sides’ skill at overlaying the real with the fantastic, contrasting innocence with malevolence. Together, they paint a picture of light driving out darkness, and love and hope—usually, but not always—overcoming fear.”

-Jen McConnell, author of Welcome, Anybody

“Those Fantastic Lives by Bradley Sides is a wonderfully curated collection that hones in on the concept of family as each story expands and converses with its neighbouring tales. Through tones that seem folkloric, Sides tells stories of grief and loss, the whirlwind nature of families, and of being an individual as a part of one, through a contemporary voice. Each story draws a connection in theme to others within this collection, but each presents these familiar themes and ideas through the lives of fantastic people and beings. […] In his stories of grief, loss, identity, and family, I am sure all readers can find themselves—and perhaps also their families—in the bits and pieces of each character and story.”

-Strange Horizons (Full Review)

“One of the greatest things about Sides’ writing is that he can make each story stand on its own while being stylistically different and still having a concise and cohesive writing style throughout. His writing is intricate enough to appeal to the masses and also to tickle the deepest literature genre fan. There is no doubt this collection of stories and his literary creations hereafter will be a successful venture, and in the end, Sides will ultimately be considered an important voice in the horror genre for a long time.”

-Horror Obsessive (Full Review)

“Whether or not you consider yourself a dreamer — or a fan of magical realism — you will likely find something to believe in reading Sides’ strange, beautiful stories. Many feel like fables, without relying on simple resolution or overarching metaphors. The author balances brisk plots with lively dialogue and flashes of poetic language.”

-Chapter 16 (Full Review)

“Bradley Sides’ new collection Those Fantastic Lives contains compelling pieces of fiction that use the speculative lens to terrify, delight, and aid us in pondering the true reality around us, and our relations to others within it. […] The significance of emotional connection can be seen throughout the entire collection from start to finish. The losses, trials, fears, and triumphs that each of the many characters experience will resonate loud and clear in our hearts.”

 -Heavy Feather Review (Full Review)

“The collection goes beyond familiar narratives of the supernatural by asking why we are afraid of monsters and ghosts, and the things we cannot explain, illuminating the depths we as humans go to protect ourselves from what we are unable to comprehend.”

-Fiction Writers Review (Full Review)

“Those Fantastic Lives is a book I, myself, couldn’t and didn’t want to put down. It’s a Kelly Link-esque collection of stories that feeds but leaves you hungry for more; its beauty and strangeness create a brilliant cocktail that promises magic, wonder, and something straddling the in-between, and it delivers each in spades. Bradley Sides’ work in this collection is incredibly detailed; the characters themselves feel like actors on a movie set rather than words dancing on a page — they breathe, they laugh, they cry.”

-Southern Review of Books (Full Interview)

“Bradley Sides uses magical realism to imbue everyday moments in his stories with a sense of eeriness and dread, but the true hauntings aren’t the ghostly apparitions with sharp bared fangs, but the emotional ghosts that we’re trying to outrun.”

-Electric Literature (Full Article)

“Sides’ new collection, Those Fantastic Lives and Other Strange Stories, is bold, unsettling, and always entertaining. Anyone seeking a quick trip into the unexpected will savor these tales.“

-Cease, Cows (Full Interview)

“While not conventional horror, this collection of stories has plenty of weird weirdness going on to give you some nightmares before bed. Filled with scarecrows and ghosts, impossible miracles, light-craving monsters, and boys with wings, the surreal magical realism in these stories will haunt you with tales of transformation and loss.”

-The Coil Magazine (Full Article)

“Reading this collection of stories, you have the feeling Bradley Sides is someone who might (reasonably) be waiting for the glowing spaceship of moviemakers to land and find his stories, make them films.”

-Grist (Full Review)

“Many of the protagonists in these 17 stories are orphans or children who have lost one parent. Grief uproots them, leaves them questing; combine their loneliness with dashes of the supernatural and you have perfect situations for strange and wonderful things to happen. […] I’d particularly recommend the book to readers of Kelly Link and Lydia Millet.”

-Bookish Beck (Full Review and Q&A)

Press:

“The Mooneaters” Excerpt at Vol. 1 Brooklyn (Read Here)

Those Fantastic Lives Playlist at Largehearted Boy (Read Here)

“Finding Comfort in the Strange: A Conversation with Bradley Sides” at Alabama Writers’ Cooperative (Read Here)

“Which Book Should You Read This Halloween?” at Electric Literature (Read Here)

“5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers” at Lit Hub (Read Here)

“7 Magical Realism Short Stories Haunted by Emotional Ghosts” at Electric Literature (Read Here)

“The Best Southern Books of October 2021” List Feature at Southern Review of Books (Read Here)

“Never Fear, Here are 63 New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books to Ease You Into Spooky Season” at Gizmodo (Read Here)

“8 Spooky Reads for Your Halloween Weekend” at The Coil Magazine (Read Here)

Anticipated October/November Small Press Releases at Entropy (Read Here)

“One Question” and Excerpt at Hypertext Magazine (Read Here)

“Commencement” Excerpt at The Coil Magazine (Read Here)

“Sides’ Magical Realism is Out” in Courier Journal (Read Here)

Interview at Cliff Garstang’s I’ve Got Questions (Read Here)

“If My Book” at Monkeybicycle (Read Here)

“Five Contemporary Magical, Weird Collections to Add to your High School Syllabus” at Big Indie Books (Read Here)

Interview at Authors Answer (Read Here)

Interview at Deborah Kalb Books (Read Here)