A near-future science fiction crime story about murder, drugs, neuroscience, more drugs, and God. It’s Elmore Leonard and Philip K. Dick road-tripping down neural pathways, with Hunter S. Thompson howling in the back seat. ‘Numinous’ opens up a portal to God – or, at least, a convincing illusion of one. In a world where God is a drug, one woman has to get sober. Lyda Rose was one of the four neuroscientists who helped create Numinous, a breakthrough drug intended to treat schizophrenia. Since unwittingly overdosing on the drug, Lyda has been haunted by visions of an angel she calls Dr. Gloria. Treated in an asylum, Lyda has to remind herself that the doctor is merely a drug- induced manifestation of her own temporal lobe, but the angel is awfully hard to argue with. Afterparty follows Lyda’s investigation into a series of Numinous-like overdoses. It is also about the ways that our brains can fool us, often for our own benefit. Along the way the book asks twenty-first century questions: If personality, sexual orientation, religious belief, and morality can be chemically twisted, what is the self? Does free will exist? And is sin even possible?