Beg for Mercy

Beg for Mercy is a novel by the American writer Toni Andrews, published in 2007 by Mira. It is the first book of a series about Mercy Hollings.

Mercy lives in California and works as a hypnotherapist, which suits a woman whose power, which she calls the press, is to make people obey her when she speaks. Ordinary tests do not explain her and she has no idea where she came from, and the novel opens with her trying to keep the ability under control while running the practice and the life she has built around it. When she does use it, or when it uses her, the consequences fall on the people closest to her, and the plot follows her attempts to find out what she is while keeping the discovery from everyone else. Andrews writes the book in the first person with a brisk, wry voice, and it is a paranormal romance with a mystery at the centre rather than a supernatural society.

The series ran to further books about the same character, and the setting is the contemporary American West rather than the gothic Europe the genre often uses.