This Help a Bitch Out request is from Hailee, who is searching for a paranormal suspense novel with some crying involved:
I am trying to find a book.
Here are the parts I remember (hopefully it is the same book). Contemporary. A group of guys working together in a military/SEAL/security company/mercenary type way. (I’m leaning toward private sector, like security company, becuase I don’t think there was a military structure).
Here is a part I only ‘sorta’ remember. I think the H brings the h into the group to be protected. Rest of the group isn’t too fond of her because she is empathic. I’m pretty sure that either no one knows she can project or at least they don’t know that she can do it to that level and strength.
Very vague memory, but I think she finds out something traumatic and while she is still dealing with it she comes up to an open door (in the house/compound where they all are) and she hears some of the guys including the H talking. She overhears something that really upsets her. I can not remember what it was, but for some reason I think it might have to do with her family…. a deception that has been going on a long time….. I don’t know, but I know one of the things she is feeling as she is running out of the house is a feeling of being alone.
Anyways what I do 100% remember is her pain is projected out so strongly that all these tough guys are on their knees and some crying because of her pain. The H gets it under control first and goes after her, passing all the other guys who are devastated. I can’t remember if he catches her right then of if she gets away and he has to find her.
I *think* that the guys aren’t supernatural or have powers but I could be wrong there. They seem to accept that she has abilities, but are not comfortable with her around because of it and they have no protection from what she does when she gets upset and projects.
I feel like that sort of empathic projection could be really useful in nefarious ways. Do you recognize this book?
This sounds like one of the Christine Feehan Game books–paramilitary organisation, empath / psychic heroines rescued from some kind of lab. It’s a long time since I read any of them and I didn’t keep the books, but that scene rings a bell.
Possibly Mind Game–less military setting, based in New Orleans, the heroine has cancer (though surely some of those details would stick?)
Cherry Adair, has an entire mercenary/paranormal series that I believe is more mental paranormal abilities than other paranormal themes.
I was thinking Feehan too, but don’t remember details across each book.
I feel like the heroine in the first one (Shadow Game) learns a terrible secret about her family but the description of Conspiracy Game says heroine is an empathy.
So…I’m pretty much no help at all. 🙂
That is definitely not Christine Feehan, but it does sound like just my sort of catnip.
Some aspects of this – the family part, particularly, and the accepting-but-no-powers security/quasi-military types – sound like Maya Banks’ In His Keeping, but I don’t recall any crying. Heroine was actually kind of a badass in that one, too – not always the case with Maya Banks’ books :/
Sounds like a merge of a few of Maya Banks books. A combo of her KGI books. In Shades of Gray the guys are in tears when something terrible happens to the female…… But in a few of the other books there are empathic/paranormal elements.
And like Cayenne said above, it does also sound a bit like “In His Keeping” too. Also by Banks.
Hi, Hailee!
Plot kind of reminds me of Gena Showalter’s book- The Darkest Night. It’s first book in her Lords of the Underworld series.
Were the military guys on the run and hiding out? I read one last year where the guys were hiding out and had built a special “hive” to live in, taking in other outsiders. The heroine was a researcher at the Evil Corp who had a premonition that she was going to be killed by said EC and ran away to safety.
I remember that the hive was like an apartment building built into a mountain with fabulous gardens on the inside and the roof over the atrium was a special nano material that let in light/water/air and hid them from flyovers. Sort of a futuristic, but not really.
I second the Gena Showalter but I don’t know if The Darkest Night fits. Or, rather, it may fit but I think there are others in the series that may also fit. Also, maybe one of her Otherworld Assassins books. I get all of her stuff mixed up.
I also seem to remember a scene like that in one of Shannon McKenna’s McClouds series but, again, I couldn’t say which one.
Gosh, that was a lot of also.
Also, sorry about that.
What was the book ReneeG mentioned in comment 9? I want to read that one!
don’t know about this HABO (soooooo want to know it though – catnip alert!), but Ruth, the books ReneeG must be talking about are the Ghost Ops books by Lisa Marie Rice. Heart of Danger is the first one. Veeeeery good reading 🙂
Thanks, Tikaanidog. My library has it so I’ve got something to look forward to!
Thanks, Tikaanidog – I was going to have to go look in my library history!
Found Heart of Danger after a recommendation from SBTB….
That sounds familiar to me. Was it perhaps a Marjorie M Liu book from her Dirk & Steele series?
@ReneeG and/or tikaanidog
Hey, since you’re here anyway and probably know – do series by Lisa Marie Rice crossover or can I read them in any order? I mean, are the Protectors and the Ghost Ops related? or others?
Thanks!
I really think that it’s Warlord’s Honor by LW Browning. The heroine is an empath and the hero is a barbarian warlord. She hears him and his men talking about accepting a contract to hunt down other empathy. She projects her sorrow to the whole castle bringing them to tears and runs away.
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh? I vaguely recall a similar scene, but it’s been a while since I’ve read the book.
I don’t know what the HABO is, but I’m quite sure it isn’t Slave to Sensation. The h being an empath is the only similarity I’m seeing there. But I’m quite interested in finding out the answer, this one sounds like one for me to look into!
No clue but I’m following because IMMA read this one! Sounds kinda awesome. I mean, we all knew that a woman’s suffering would bring a man to his knees, no?
@Random Michelle
Fairly certain it wasn’t Dirk and Steele.
It is absolutely one of Christine Feehan Game books, involving the Ghostwalkers, but I’m not 100% sure which one- Mind Game with Dahlia rings the most bells for me though. I just binged all 11 of them just a month or so ago and they’re all kind of running together in my head…
Darn. No one knows? I’d like to read this book as well!
Maybe one of Marjorie Liu’s books?
I’m wondering if Junebug doesn’t have it. There was a poster at Amazon who was looking for a book kind of like this and the answer was Warlords Honor
Heather
Okay, clearly I did not read the whole thread before replying — someone already said it wasn’t Marjorie Liu’s Dirk and Steele books, self.
Can’t be Warlord’s Honor – description said contemporary.
I am stunned at how many possibilities are being mooted. I had no idea empath/military-security guys was such a deep niche!
@Coco, the various Lisa Marie Rice series do not cross over–they are all independent series. My favorite is still the Midnight series, which she has recently resumed writing. These are best read in order because the new ones refer to characters and events in the first three.
Could it be Murder Game? Of the game books it has a sensitive empath/ psychometric h with a seriously upsetting family secret. Plus the plot revolves around an off the books murder investigation so it at least feels less military.
What I learned from this particular HaBO:
All pnr have this plot!
maybe one of Cherry Adair’s T-FLAC books. There’s a lot of them to sort through. I’ve only read one.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/show/42268-t-flac
I read this, expecting only navy seals and got WTF? Empath? So I think it was someone who doesn’t (or didn’t) usually write paranormal. And whose stuff I hadn’t read much of before and maybe none of since. Not very helpful, sorry…
I really do this is Heart of Danger by Lisa Marie Rice. Other than the crying jag scene, it has all the other elements of the HABO summary. Empath, check. Evil Corporation, check. Elite solidery group done wrong, check.
One element that’s interesting about this book is the whole beauty and the beast thread that underpins the tale.
It’s crack. Book 2 is even crackier and book 3 has zombies.
I too am searching for this series! Her father is the Doctor and the bad guy, there are twin male good guys, one of whom was tortured and disfigured, she is looking for a cure for what her father did to them, they live in a group compound . . . not Maya Banks. Many books in the series . . .
@susan
Thanks!
I second (or third) it is a Feehan games series. It is the first one which I reread last month.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9553.Shadow_Game
She has a boss secure compound and a sassy staff.
Hi Ellen! You’re definitely looking for the Christine Feehan Ghostwalkers (Game) Series. Conspiracy Game has Jack Norton/Briony and Deadly Game is the one with Ken Norton, the twin who was tortured and disfigured. Whitney is the bad guy doctor who took orphaned(ish) girls from all over the world and experimented on them, and who later started experimenting on soldiers, and Lily Whitney is his daughter, on the side of good, who is looking for a cure…
I want to say its one of the books from the Warriors of Poseidon series by Alyssa Day but for the life of me I cant recall which one. There is definitely one where they are in a safe house and the main heros are talking about the girl and overhears something and runs off… I’ll have to go through them and see if I can find an excerpt for you.