The Shadow Beyond — Daniel Reiner

"I am not dead; nor am I fully alive. The intangibles of thought and memory are nearly all I have in common with the man I once was. Half-consumed, I sit upon the floor, a biblical leper..."

What brought the young Robert Adderly to this wretched point? A graduate student at Miskatonic University during Prohibition, he had led an average life--up to the point when his fiancée, Elizabeth, was reduced to ashes before his very eyes. In his quest to find answers to the riddle of Elizabeth's demise, Robert is drawn into an alien and dangerous world. A burning need to get to the bottom of the mystery opens his eyes to a reality much larger and more dangerous than he could have ever imagined, where magic is just another science, and his system of beliefs is challenged...and toppled.