What is the title of your latest release?
DANCE IN A MADHOUSE
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
DANCE IN A MADHOUSE is a gripping historical mystery that takes readers inside an early twentieth-century asylum where secrets, courage, and danger collide.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I chose Philadelphia because it has a unique character and a fascinating history. I was a medical student in Philadelphia and know the city well.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
I am a seasoned psychiatrist, and the heroine is a young woman who is struggling to repair the damage from a postpartum psychosis. I might have her as a patient, but I wouldn’t hang out with her.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Smart, resilient, courageous
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned about “lunatic balls” that were held in mental asylums during the early part of the twentieth century. George Bellows depicted the scene of psychiatric patients dancing while onlookers gawked at them in DANCE IN A MADHOUSE – a work in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This searing example of stigmatization and mistreatment provided the title for my novel about a young doctor who is trapped in an asylum and is fighting for his life.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I do both – edit while I am drafting and then again after a full version is completed.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I love to cook, so there are many things I enjoy. Arctic char, cooked simply with lemon and capers, is one of my favorites.
Describe your writing space/office!
I am fortunate to have an office that overlooks a large garden of perennials and shrubs that I tend. When I sit down in a comfortable desk chair with a carafe of coffee, I am ready to go.
Who is an author you admire?
Of contemporary authors, I especially admire Daniel Mason. He is a psychiatrist at Stanford and a wonderful writer.
Is there a book that changed your life?
CP Snow’s book, THE TWO CULTURES, with its clarion call for a life that unites the arts and sciences, was a huge influence.
Tell us about when you got “the call” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I had published eight medical books and many scientific articles before my first novel, A STREAM TO FOLLOW, was published. The medical books were hard work, but I didn’t need to search for publishers. Breaking into fiction was much more difficult. When I received a positive response from SparkPress, it was a very good day.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction
What’s your favorite movie?
Chariots of Fire
What is your favorite season?
Spring
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Dinner out at a favorite restaurant
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
NORTHWOODS by Daniel Mason
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Modern French
What do you do when you have free time?
Garden, sing in a choir, travel, fly-fish, read
What can readers expect from you next?
My next novel is a sequel to DANCE IN A MADHOUSE and is part of the Owen Townsend Mystery Series. Also set in Philadelphia in the early twentieth century, DANCE ON THE EDGE is a psychological thriller that takes readers into the lair of a terrorist whom Owen calls “the cutter.”
I’m also working on a memoir that describes my adventures in a richly satisfying and at times dramatic life as a psychiatrist.
DANCE IN A MADHOUSE by Jess Wright
The gripping psychological tale of a young doctor who fights to escape an early‑1900s Philadelphia asylum—and expose the plot to destroy him.
Philadelphia, 1905. A month ago, Owen Townsend was a medical intern primed for success. Now he is locked in Fairmount Lodge, an asylum where the public is invited to gawk at the patients. His fall was sudden: typhoid fever, delirium, an act of violence. Is Owen sane—a victim of a toxin no longer in his system? Or is he as psychotic as his doctor claims?
There are fires at Fairmount. Attacks that defy logic. Terror instead of treatment. Though others dismiss his concerns as paranoia, Owen soon realizes that someone wants him put away forever—or dead. To survive, he not only must navigate the labyrinth of the madhouse but also must recruit someone on the outside to his cause. Brumbaugh, a shrewd police inspector, is the man for the job—and Celeste, an enigmatic young opera singer who transfixes him after he saves her from suicide, might have the clues they need to solve the mystery. But if Owen is going to find a way to freedom, he’ll first have to decipher riddles from Celeste’s tortured past.
Set at the dawn of modern psychiatric treatment, Dance in a Madhouse is a thrilling testament to courage and resilience. Can Owen and Celeste overcome the odds against them? Are redemption and healing possible? The dances will tell.
Suspense Psychological | Suspense Historical [ Montague Books, On Sale: September 29, 2026, Paperback, ISBN: 9781646049325 / ]
Buy DANCE IN A MADHOUSE: Amazon.com | BN.com | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Walmart.com |
About Jess Wright
Jess Wright is Professor at the University of Louisville Medical School and an internationally recognized psychiatrist. The first author of a trilogy of critically acclaimed medical books on cognitive-behavior therapy, his research on therapy for depression has received multiple grant awards from the National Institutes of Health, and he has lectured widely in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. His debut novel, A Stream to Follow, is an award-winning account of a battlefield surgeon’s recovery from the psychological trauma of warfare.
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