Sam and Nick return in Marie Force's new 'Fatal Scandal'

Marie Force joins HEA to share a whole bunch of news about her Fatal Series, including a tidbit about the upcoming look back at Sam and Nick's first night together (woo hoo!). Book eight of the series, Fatal Scandal, arrives today.

Marie: I'm so excited to bring Sam and Nick back for another adventure in Fatal Scandal, book eight of the Fatal Series. Fatal Scandal picks up right where Fatal Jeopardy left off, and we're witnessing the fallout from an investigation that went off the rails in Jeopardy. Sam's beloved Chief Farnsworth is under scrutiny for a questionable decision he made in the Springer investigation, which has come back to haunt him and everyone involved in the case.

Add to that, Sam's colleague Thomas "Gonzo" Gonzales finds himself caught up in a scandal of his own making when his prior relationship with the judge who heard his son's custody case is made public by the baby's mother.

With scandal brewing all around them, Sam, Nick and their son, Scotty, are settling into their new roles as the nation's second family. In addition to all the professional stress both Sam and Nick are enduring, things are heating up with Scotty's adoption in Fatal Scandal.

One other thing I'll say about Scandal … Sam gets herself into a seriously dangerous and messy situation in this book. I would go so far to say she's in mortal danger. And damn, that was fun to write! Especially when Nick finds out about it …

As always, you can expect some humorous dialogue between Sam and her beleaguered partner, Freddie Cruz, as well as some more about FBI Agent Avery Hill's relationship with Sam and Nick's assistant, Shelby Faircloth.

Fatal Sandal is out today everywhere e-books are sold. It will be in limited edition print at Harlequin.com in April.

Speaking of the Fatal Series in print, this is going to be a very exciting year for the series. Coming in print with all-new covers will be Fatal Affair and Fatal Justice in May; Fatal Consequences/Fatal Destiny and Fatal Flaw in June; Fatal Deception in July; Fatal Mistake in August; and Fatal Jeopardy in September. Early next year watch for Fatal Scandal and book nine, tentatively called Fatal Frenzy. By mid-2016, when book 10 is released, the mass-market paperback will be released simultaneously with the e-book. It's very exciting to see the Fatal series moving to the next level, and the team at Harlequin has been amazingly supportive of the series.

Check out TheFatalSeries.com website Harlequin has put together for the series as well as the fabulous new trailer. Also on that site you can see the new covers of the Fatal Series books.

It's been almost five years since we met this dynamic duo in Fatal Affair, the book that started the series. Since then, Sam and Nick have been through personal and professional upheaval, as have their family and colleagues.

We've seen Sam grow as a professional and as a partner from when we first met her in Fatal Affair, when she was fresh off a case that went terribly wrong when a child ended up dead in a shootout. Back then, Sam had trouble sharing her burden with Nick, the man she has loved since a "memorable" one-night stand six years earlier.

Readers have been asking me for years about that one-night stand, and you're finally going to get to read all about it in One Night With You, a Fatal Series novella, which is out in May in the new print version of Fatal Affair and in e-book format in June.

It was a trip for me to go back in time to before Fatal Affair to write about the first time Sam and Nick met and the amazing night they spent together. Knowing what was ahead for them, it was both bittersweet and exciting to write that special night and to witness the intense connection they shared from the first minute they met. It was crazy to see Skip Holland before he was a quadriplegic and to meet Sam and Nick when they were still on the way up in their careers.

I'm often asked how long I plan to write the Fatal Series, and my answer is always the same. As long as the readers are loving Sam and Nick's story and it's still fun for me to write, I'm all in. So far so good on both fronts!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy Fatal Scandal!

Find out more about Marie and her books at marieforce.com.