What happens when a faded winner and a disgraced producer try to find redemption on reality TV?

Read an excerpt from Stephen Fishbach’s Survivor-themed novel, Escape! (exclusive)

What happens when a faded winner and a disgraced producer try to find redemption on reality TV?

By Dalton Ross

Dalton Ross is a writer and editor with over 25 years experience covering TV and the entertainment industry. *Survivor* is kind of his thing.

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January 16, 2026 11:15 a.m. ET

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Sometimes, real life is more dramatic than fiction. But only sometimes.

Because the things that go down in Stephen Fishbach’s debut novel are pretty damn dramatic. Of course, *Escape!* draws heavily from Fishbach’s real-life experience as a reality television contestant who competed twice on *Survivor* during the *Tocantins* and *Cambodia* seasons. So art is indeed imitating art.

However, Fishbach — who already won the prestigious Pushcart Prize for a short story that would eventually be folded into *Escape!* — has only used his time on *Survivor* as a jumping off point to tell the absolutely engrossing tale of a “faded reality show winner” and a disgraced producer, both attempting to find salvation in the only place they know how to find such things — back on reality TV.

The novel, which is available for pre-order now and goes on sale Jan. 27, is a wild ride that will keep readers glued to the page the same way they are glued to their screens during their favorite reality competition shows. And we’ve got an exclusive excerpt you can read right here and right now.

Stephen Fishbach on 'Survivor: Cambodia'.

Monty Brinton/CBS

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In the excerpt below, we see down-on-his-luck realty champion Kent making what he hopes will be his triumphant return to television. But hopes don’t always turn into dreams. At least not good ones. Before you enjoy the excerpt, which shows Kent’s arrival on his TV redemption tour, check out the official description for *Escape!*

*Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory — to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type — Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest — but everyone is more than they appear.****The contestants’ goals seem simple — survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.****As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.*

Cover for 'Escape!' novel by Stephen Fishbach.

Courtesy of Dutton

Excerpt from Escape! by Stephen Fishbach

As the bright yellow Zodiac shivers across the choppy waves, Kent’s already thinking about how he’ll describe it in his interviews. *I was like an explorer*, he’ll say. *Adventuring into an uncharted world.* The island beckons to him, a tropical paradise, palm trees belly dancing at the edge of a white sand beach straight from a Corona ad. Two cameramen race up and down the shore, their rigs gripped against their shoulders. Two sound engineers balance their boom mikes on their heads. A drone swoops through the air. He feels like he’s rocketing into a myth, like he’s writing himself into the pages of *Treasure Island*. The spray is in his face. He shakes his machete into the sky and lets out a giant whoop, which is echoed by the scream of a red-and-green bird that flashes upward from the jungle.

There are nine of them clutching the Zodiac’s rubber edge, speeding toward the show. Eight contestants and Erika, a skinny producer with the look of a furious terrier glaring at them from a handbag. The boat’s driver, a bearded maniac who reeks of body spray, whoops as he steers into the swells, launching them skyward and crashing back. Ashley’s next to him, dolled up in a red wrap mini that’s breathtakingly, spectacularly impractical for the outdoors. Across the boat, a young guy with thin lips and a sweater tied around his shoulders leans back and splays his legs. He looks like the asshole boyfriend from every teen movie. The older lady who was muttering to herself in casting is there. A nerd girl with Coke-bottle lenses pulls her lab coat close. The sexpot. The villain. The battle-ax. The nerd. And here’s Kent Duvall. The alpha male.

He never thought of himself as an archetype before his first season on *Endure*. He was Kent. He worked construction. He went out with the guys. Dated a bit, but never a ladies’ man. He waited until he was eighteen to lose his virginity because he wanted to find the right girl. Kind of a screwup at times. He’d once been detained by the police when he and some buddies drunkenly sprayed fire extinguishers across the thirty-third floor of a Vegas hotel. An average guy, he figured. Then fifteen years ago, he was walking through the hallways of the Kimpton Hotel Santa Monica, paired with two other broad-shouldered rough-handed men as they moved between meetings with casting associates and network execs. The three of them sat side by side outside hotel room doors waiting to be interviewed, forbidden from speaking, clearly competing for the same spot. They weren’t the only group. Three leathery older women stalked through the halls. There were three nerds, in different varieties of nerdiness—a skinny nerd with glasses, a chubby nerd with a Captain America T-shirt, and a biker with pierced eyebrows and a tattoo sleeve, who would gaze at Kent’s trio with yearning every time they passed in the hallways, like somehow he got misfiled into the wrong group.

At first Kent hated how quickly he’d been reduced to a tick on a demographic survey. Like finding out you’re a clone, you start to wonder which parts of yourself are authentically *you* and which parts have been mass-imprinted by the social machinery. The trio would use the hotel gym at the same time, each guy adding another couple of plates to the bench press when it was his turn. At some point the third guy wasn’t there. Then Kent was the only one. He was the alpha male of alpha males. This morning, when Erika gave each contestant a single survival item, he got the machete.

He leaps off the boat before it even stops moving, holding the blade aloft like a flag. He’s wearing a lavalier mike disguised as a beaded necklace—they all are—but the necklaces are supposedly waterproof, and the transmitters are in small waterproof pouches clipped to their underwear. Behind him the boat motors to a stop. The wind stills. The heat presses in, warping the air. The other contestants climb off the Zodiac and follow him toward shore. Kelly-Anne sashays up the beach in full-on vamp, like she’s on a *Sports Illustrated* photo shoot. An older man, aggressively spray-tanned with a pronounced gut and dyed black hair that’s swept backward along his neck, looks like he might be carried away by the tide. Carl roars again and again as he splashes in, like a children’s toy with only one button.

They gather on the shore and give each other excited hugs. The last one off the boat is the nerd. They all watch as she hesitates on the gunwale. “You can do it, Glasses!” shouts Ashley. The girl takes a tentative step forward, stumbles, and face-plants into the waves. The group exchanges little looks. Kent can practically hear the clown music. “I hope they let us vote people off,” says the bro. Kent starts to laugh but glances quickly at the cameras. He doesn’t want to be the bully.

When the sopping girl has joined them on the beach, one of the producers separates from the huddle of production personnel. “Welcome to *Escape!*,” he says.

**Excerpted from* Escape! *by Stephen Fishbach, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2026 by Stephen Fishbach.**

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