“People sometimes ask where I get my ideas. Let’s just say I tickle the dark edges of reality until they scream.”

These are the first words from “Broken Annie: The NDE,” a new novel written by Jim Thorpe’s Jeff Davis, his latest work and the ninth addition to his personally authored collection.

In previous books, Davis has created stories with serial killers and living ghosts. He’s penned his autobiography. Now, he crosses over from life to death and back to life again in his new thriller.

In “Broken Annie: The NDE,” the setting begins in California before Davis takes his readers back home to his familiar stomping grounds in Jim Thorpe, where he grew up.

In the first few pages, he mentions Memorial Hall, the Lehigh River and Broadway, the main street that runs through the business district. In each of his books, the plot is built for characters who are pulled into his lifelong hangouts like a perfectly fit pair of gloves.

“At this point, I’ve thrown just about everything at the town,” he said. “Monsters on Mount Pisgah, an oil crisis, a deadly virus, and even a global conflict to decide the fate of the world. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”

Any author is seriously challenged when he writes about a topic in which he has had no personal history, and that was an issue with Davis when he delved into the phenomenon of near-death experiences.

“This was the one of the toughest parts to write,” he said. “I listened to real accounts from people who had been clinically dead. I dug deeper into the research. The challenge was keeping it grounded in what people actually report. The last thing I wanted was to feel like I’d taken a wrong turn into fantasy land.”

With nine novels already in print, Davis has had no problem coming up with ideas that evolve into his books.

“Most of my stories begin with a single moment, like a spark that catches fire and refuses to go out,” he said.

Writers are often asked if they trust the facts that they turn into fictional stories. Davis was asked if he believed in near-death experiences which, in “Broken Annie: The NDE,” drives the plot.

“After speaking with people firsthand and digging into a wide range of accounts, I kept running into something I didn’t expect: a strange consistency that feels … bigger than coincidence,” he said. “These stories don’t read like ordinary dreams. They carry a kind of clarity. Perhaps the most telling detail is that many who experience them seem reluctant to return. Which, depending on your outlook, might be a subtle critique of this place we call home.

“I’d like readers to walk away with something that nudges them to reflect, or even reconsider parts of their own life. In ‘Almina Rose,’ it’s the idea that a single, seemingly small moment can change everything.

“In ‘The Rising,’ where global destruction is decided by the sacrifice of children in a small-town lottery, it’s about confronting our moral boundaries. And in ‘Broken Annie: The NDE,’ it’s an invitation to wrestle with the possibility of an afterlife, while also facing the realities of fame, addiction and homelessness.”

In each of his books, Davis steps inside worlds that he creates. In “Broken Annie: The NDE,” he crosses the line from “the next world into this one.” He gets inspiration from “just about anywhere,” he said. He created a villain in Jonas Blackheart from seeing a man on the street threatening people with a knife.

“In ‘Broken Annie: The NDE,’ it started at a conference in Pittsburgh, when a homeless girl named Annie approached me on a freezing night in the lobby of a hotel, just before the hotel told her to leave and help arrived,” he said. “She shared a dream — of dying, of seeing a light, of a place far better than this one, where she believed God would take care of her, no matter what life brought.

“Later, back in my room, I wrote a few notes. And from there, the story has found its way into the world.”

Early reviews for are praising the novel.

The literary site Midnight Quill invites both old and new Davis fans to read this book: “After a horrific accident leaves Annie West clinically dead on the operating table, a near-death experience forces her to confront everything she believes about life, death, and what it truly means to survive. Broken Annie: NDE is a gripping supernatural story that explores the fragile line between life and death, the power of human connection, and the lengths we’ll go to hold onto hope.”

An Amazon reviewer wrote: “Fascinating look on what lies on the other side, and a gripping suspense that takes the reader into a world of the pitfalls of fame. The ending blew me away. A great read.”

Jeff Davis’s new novel is a runaway roller coaster that swerves and swings its readers until they arrive at an unexpected and shocking destination.

“Broken Annie: The NDE” is available on Amazon Kindle, in paperback at local retailers, and will soon be available as an audiobook.