Rob Thomas, creator of the Veronica Mars TV series and director of the feature film recently released theatrically and on Video on Demand services, released the first original Veronica Mars prose novel today, and he's released the first five minutes of the audiobook as a free preview -- about four times the length that iTunes is giving away.

Following up on the events of the feature film, Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line is narrated by Kristen Bell, who starred in both the series and the movie as Veronica herself.

"I'm pleased that we were able to get an actor with Kristen's talent and experience," Thomas wrote to fans who supported the film via Kickstarter. "I tried to get the voice actress who played the narrator in Gossip Girl, but apparently she has a movie out that just did a billion dollars worldwide, so she's entirely out of our league now. I think you'll enjoy Ms. Bell's performance as the titular heroine of the book, nonetheless. You'll also hear her interpretations of all the other roles as well: Veronica voices Weevil! Veronica voices Cliff McCormack!"

Bell, of course, was the narrator on Gossip Girl and her movie Frozen did, indeed, cross $1 billion worldwide and was the second-highest-grossing film released in 2013 (behind The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and ahead of Iron Man 3).

"The book and audiobook are not PG-13, for the record, so if you prefer the audiobook, you'll get to hear Kristen drop more than one F-bomb," Thomas warned. "You're welcome."

The film, meanwhile, was PG-13 and played with the long-standing convention of one f-word per PG-13 movie. After the first instance, a second one where it seemed to have been called for in the script got a substitute word, followed by the line "Thanks for keeping it PG-13" from another character.

If you're interested in reading (or hearing) the rest of The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, Random House has a rundown of where you can order the print, eBook or audiobook versions.