The Reservoir follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he, in his enforced quarantined solitude, looks back upon his life. He examines his wins, his failures, the gnawing questions – his career, his divorce, his estranged daughter – and questions what it all means and who he really was.
Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is, this fellow quarantine damsel in distress trapped in her own Fifth Avenue tower, leads him on an epic quest that will ultimately tempt him with either delusional madness or the fulfillment of his own mythic fate. Is he a dying man going mad or an Everyman metamorphosing into a hero? Or both? We accompany Ridley as he leaves the safety of his apartment window to save the Fifth Avenue femme fatale and descends into a dangerous, increasingly surreal world of the global conspiracies, madness, and sickness of this viral time; beyond that, into the enduring mysteries of love and fatherhood; and deeper still, into the bedrock mystery of life itself. As Ridley’s actions grow more and more uncharacteristic, he realizes the key to all the mysteries of now and even all of history seem to lie deep beneath the freezing waters of the reservoir.
The Reservoir is a twisted rom-com for our distanced time when the merest touch could kill and conspiracy theories propagate like viruses – a present-day union of Death in Venice, Rear Window, and The Plague.
An epic adventure that asks how we make sense of right and wrong in a world of extremes.
For the past twenty years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and ten children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary, and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence—controversial, difficult, but Edenic—is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.
Maya, threatening to report the family to social services, convinces them to enter three of their children into a nearby public school. Bronson and his wives agree that if Maya can prove that the kids do better in town than in their desert oasis, they will sell her a chunk of their priceless plot of land. Suddenly confronted with all the complications of the twenty-first century that they tried to keep out of their lives, the Powerses must reckon with their lifestyle as they try to save it.
Truly Like Lightning, David Duchovny’s fourth novel, is a heartbreaking meditation on family, religion, sex, greed, human nature, and the vanishing environment of an ancient desert.
“This beguiling book crackles with energy and intelligence. It makes you laugh and then just when you think the ride is coming to an end . . . it delivers a right hook that leaves you aghast. It kind of broke my heart and I loved every minute of it.” ―Samantha Bee
“Truly Like Lightning is a terrific novel―smart, moving, propulsive―at once a satire of Hollywood power brokers and a dead-serious contemplation of American values and ideals. David Duchovny writes with the heart of a great comic novelist and the soul of a philosopher.”
―Jess Walter, author of The Cold Millions
“Duchovny is best known for his idiosyncratic roles in The X-Files and Californication, and he has a wildly unpredictable voice as a writer. Here he offers a dramatic parable involving trespasses against others and the dire consequences that follow . . .Duchovny’s characteristically nimble prose not only connects the various narratives, but exposes the complicated humanity of his multifarious cast. An engrossing story about a clash of cultures and the extremities of faith.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A bucking ride through the 21st-century American West . . . Duchovny’s jam-packed page-turner is just waiting for someone to snap up the film rights.” — Publishers Weekly
“In this broad social novel, David Duchovny makes a thrilling leap as a writer, with the skill to match his ambition. I love the high desert of Southern California and he claims it for his own mythology. Written before the social maladies of 2020, it reflects them in advance. He rides the zeitgeist.”
— Michael Tolkin
David Duchovny reimagines the Irish mythological figure of Emer in Miss Subways, a darkly comic fantasy love story set in New York City.
Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on? Taking inspiration from the myth of Emer and Cuchulain and featuring an all-star cast of mythical figures from all over the world, David Duchovny’s darkly funny fantasy novel Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny. A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York.
“Fresh off a new season of the evergreen X-Files and a late-blooming music career, the multitalented Duchovny (Bucky F*cking Dent, 2016, etc.) offers a spooky domestic drama that is equal parts Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman… An entertaining, postmodern fairy tale that tests the boundaries of love and fate.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“David Duchovny’s Miss Subways is a marvelous, riveting novel on the mystical nature of love. In it, a scarred, unlikely girl becomes a teacher in all meanings of the word. You want to cheer when she takes charge of her destiny. Unputdownable!”
— Mary Karr
“Miss Subways is a charming and wildly inventive comic novel—fantastical and sardonic; rich in myth, literature, philosophy and satire. David Duchovny has such love for his title character and for her New York that the affection fairly rumbles beneath the book’s riotous surface.”
— Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American Novel, and spends the waning days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent.
When Ted hears the news that his estranged father, Marty, is dying of lung cancer, he immediately moves back into his childhood home, where a whirlwind of revelations ensues. The browbeating absentee father of Ted’s youth tries to make up for lost time, but his health dips drastically whenever his beloved Red Sox lose. And so, with help from Mariana—the Nuyorican grief counselor with whom Ted promptly falls in love—and a crew of neighborhood old-timers, Ted orchestrates the illusion of a Boston winning streak, enabling Marty and the Red Sox to reverse the Curse of the Bambino and cruise their way to World Series victory. Well, sort of.
David Duchovny’s richly drawn Bucky F*cking Dent explores the bonds between fathers and sons and the age-old rivalry between Yankee fans and the Fenway faithful, and grapples with our urgent need to persevere—and risk everything—in the name of love. Culminating in that fateful moment in October of ’78 when the mighty Bucky Dent hit his way into baseball history with the unlikeliest of home runs, this tender, insightful, and hilarious novel demonstrates how life truly belongs to the losers, and that the long shots are the ones worth betting on.
Bucky F*cking Dent is a singular tale that brims with the mirth, poignancy, and profound solitude of modern life.
Hilarious and deeply touching. . . Not a baseball book any more than Field of Dreams is a baseball book, this moving, beautiful novel resonates with laughter and tears throughout.”
— Don Oldenburg, USA Today
“If it’s annoying that Mr. Duchovny, who’s already a phenomenally successful and painfully good-looking actor is also a funny and natural writer—his last book, the animal allegory Holy Cow, also earned high praise from skeptical critics—then at least give him some points for self-awareness. Like his character in Californication, Mr. Duchovny knows how he comes off and doesn’t mind if you resent him. He just wants a fair shake . . . Mr. Duchovny spoke to the Observer about writing, acting and the shocking demise of the wondrous Garry Shandling.”
— Ken Kurson, NY Observer
“Duchovny has hit this one out of the park. . . he does a terrific job of blending quirky and emotional writing.” —The Associated Press
“Duchovny finds the humor and poetry in life’s lost causes.”— Entertainment Weekly
A New York Times bestseller, Holy Cow is a rollicking, globe-trotting adventure with a twist: a four-legged heroine you won’t soon forget.
Elsie Bovary is a cow, and a pretty happy one at that— her long, lazy days are spent eating, napping, and chatting with her best friend, Mallory. One night, Elsie and Mallory sneak out of their pasture, but while Mallory is interested in flirting with the neighboring bulls, Elsie finds herself drawn to the farmhouse. Through the window, she sees the farmer’s family gathered around a bright Box God— and what the Box God reveals about something called an “industrial meat farm” shakes Elsie’s understanding of her world to its core.
There’s only one solution: escape to a better, safer world. And so a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Jerry— excuse me, Shalom— a cranky, Torah-reading pig who’s recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave (in his own mind, at least) turkey who can’t fly, but who can work an iPhone with his beak. Toting stolen passports and slapdash human disguises, they head for the airport.
Elsie is our wise-cracking, pop-culture-reference-dropping, slyly witty narrator; Tom— who does eventually learn to fly (sort of)— dispenses psychiatric advice in a fake German accent; and Shalom, rejected by his adopted people in Jerusalem, ends up unexpectedly uniting Israelis and Palestinians. David Duchovny’s charismatic creatures point the way toward a mutual understanding and acceptance that the world desperately needs.
“[Duchovny’s] debut novel is a charming fable about dignity and tolerance, complete with anthropomorphized animals and replete with puns, double-entendres and sophisticated humor… Between the book’s sly humor, gently humanist (animalist?) message and wry illustrations by Natalya Balnova, this is a pseudo-children’s book that smart adults should greatly enjoy. An offbeat adventure that reads like Bill Willingham’s Fablesdirected by Ralph Bakshi.”
— Kirkus Review
“Wide-eyed and playfully juvenile… [Holy Cow] is refreshing to read.”
— Matt Haig, The Guardian
“[Duchovny’s] zany, madcap first novel, Holy Cow… is a seriously entertaining fable that doesn’t take itself too seriously… Duchovny is a witty writer, and he’s especially good at conjuring these oddball voices.”
— John Wilwol, The Washington Post
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