"It" girl Ellen Gregory has it all: a brilliant career in stand-up comedy, a smash-hit sitcom, the obligatory celebrity mansion in L.A., and the publicists, manager, and studio executives that come with it. She is, simply, America's Favorite Girl Next Door. But after a violent encounter with a stalker, Ellen flees Hollywood and finds herself on a journey made for the big screen. From L.A. to New York to her childhood home in Iowa to the bedroom of a brilliant scientist who defies fate, Ellen Gregory rewrites the script of her life as she never imagined it. A sexy, romantic, literary page-turner, THE FINAL APPEARANCE OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE GIRL NEXT DOOR explores the collision of predestination, technology, science, love, and loss.

STEPHEN STARK is the author of the novels Second Son and The Outskirts. Second Son was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick. He is also a bestselling ghostwriter. His essays, short stories, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, The Washington Post, and the New York Times Book Review, among other journals. Honors include fellowships from Bread Loaf and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Virginia and is a graduate of George Mason University and the writing program at Hollins University.

SHELF MEDIA GROUP is the publisher of Shelf Unbound indie book review magazine. www.shelfmediagroup.com

"It" girl Ellen Gregory has it all: a brilliant career in stand-up comedy, a smash-hit sitcom, the obligatory celebrity mansion in L.A., and the publicists, manager, and studio executives that come with it. She is, simply, America's Favorite Girl Next Door. But after a violent encounter with a stalker, Ellen flees Hollywood and finds herself on a journey made for the big screen. From L.A. to New York to her childhood home in Iowa to the bedroom of a brilliant scientist who defies fate, Ellen Gregory rewrites the script of her life as she never imagined it. A sexy, romantic, literary page-turner, THE FINAL APPEARANCE OF AMERICA'S FAVORITE GIRL NEXT DOOR explores the collision of predestination, technology, science, love, and loss.

STEPHEN STARK is the author of the novels Second Son and The Outskirts. Second Son was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick. He is also a bestselling ghostwriter. His essays, short stories, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, The Washington Post, and the New York Times Book Review, among other journals. Honors include fellowships from Bread Loaf and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Virginia and is a graduate of George Mason University and the writing program at Hollins University.

SHELF MEDIA GROUP is the publisher of Shelf Unbound indie book review magazine. www.shelfmediagroup.com

“Ellen Gregory in Love”

The water was warmish (at least for North Carolina in June) and you could feel the warmth of the water at the surface, and an icy bite from the depths, almost as though the water were swimming within itself. You could see the beach. The taste of saltwater was in her mouth and she looked at Michael, his curly, dark hair matted from the wet, his face full of joy. He was just beyond her and he was laughing, rising and falling in the swells -- he had that Midwesterner’s delight in the ocean. Now he was floating on his back and pointing at the gulls, which were everywhere now.

The water caught a thousand mirrors of sunlight, and for a moment, she lost sight of Michael. The gulls were everywhere, wheeling in the sky, dipping into the water, floating. There was a strange moment of panic as she scanned the water for him -- and suddenly he was next to her, his mouth right next to her ear.

Hi, he said.

Hi, yourself, she said.

You’re beautiful, he said and kissed her.

Are you cold?, he said.

No, she said, It’s wonderful.

He kissed her again, and when he moved away, she went to him and kissed him again. This is what it could be like, she thought, as he dove under again and resurfaced a few yards from her. He splashed at her and she ducked, and then he went underwater again.

And then she was floating in the swells, watching the gulls and other sea birds dipping into the water, watching the man she loved, his dark hair gleaming wet.

ELLEN GREGORY IN LOVE!!!

Michael had completely flunked whatever litmus tests she’d had. He was a nerd, a geek -- good-looking -- but still. A scientist. A video-game-playing, glasses-wearing (when he was in front of a computer screen), ABD Ph.D. professor-to-be, with geeky friends, who argued passionately about things she’d never heard of. And who had never heard of her because while he did own a TV, it was kept safely in a closet, just in case something important actually happened.

Love: Well, here it was, the strangled breath when she was near him, this waking up in the morning next to him feeling like every day was Christmas.

They were not terribly far out -- 10 or 15 yards from shore. Not far from here the bottom would fall off and sweep deeper and deeper into the cold darkness of the Atlantic, where it would give way to shipping lanes and container ships and vast unseen storms and would not rise again except to the sweet calls of some child across the world, the endless thunder of surf. She floated on her back, looked at the blue, blue sky. Here she could watch the irregular vortices of gull-flight, the perpetual motion of the waves. Here she could see her friends -- blurs on the sand, stripes of color. She thought of Michael and wondered at the bizarre way that life happens. You get to a place and look at what surrounds you -- sun, water, sky -- and marvel at the circumstances that brought you here.

But where was she? On the precipice between today and tomorrow, between with him and without. She thought she felt a cold current come up from the deep and a chill of fear rode through her.

Michael was beyond her, his skin darker than she had ever seen it, his hair catching sunlight, blackly metallic. He had been next to her a moment ago, the warmth of him, the brush of his legs, the cup of his hand on the back of her head, treading water and kissing her, and then he had drifted away, and she knew he would swim back to her, and that was the way she was thinking of it, the future, or near-future. They would drift away and come together. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Until.

It was nauseating to think of it.

When the fish bashed scraping against her leg, almost dragging her under with its mass and speed, she thought for a moment it was Michael, being uncharacteristically rough. This pissed her off -- the scrape burned in the saltwater and she could feel herself going hot with anger she had never felt with him. She shouted, but he could not hear, and then suddenly that thought dissolved into confusion. Just a few yards away from her, he burst through the surface, way too high speed, jetting like a water skier almost, sideways, his head rising up out of the water and leaving a gorgeous arc of shimmering water droplets, one arm flailing down towards his hips, his legs, the other grappling somehow to right himself. His face had a broken, aghast look. Inhaled water gagged his scream of Get out now.

And in that hill of water, that wake-like wave that thrust him sideways, she could see the fish, could see how enormous it was, bigger around than a barrel and long enough that she couldn’t even see where it ended. Just the fin itself was enormous. At least as tall as her arm. And she felt the way she felt when Wayne Townsend had kidnapped her, with absolutely no control over anything.

The fish thrust him out of the water as high as his waist and drove him towards shore, then sideways, and she froze utterly, the reality of it just too bizarre and monstrous to believe. And then the adrenaline came and she willed herself to swim.

From The Final Appearance of America’s Favorite Girl Next Door by Stephen Stark, Shelf Media Group 2011, www.shelfmediagroup.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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