This week on Story Radio, Tabitha Potts and Martin Nathan talk to Ava Glass (shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger and dubbed "the new Queen of spy fiction" by The Guardian) about her compelling new novel, The Hiding Season, published by Penguin on 26th March 2026.
The Hiding Season marks a bold departure from Ava's acclaimed Emma Makepeace series. Where those novels followed a trained British intelligence officer, this book places an entirely ordinary woman — Maya Landry, recently escaped from a broken marriage and working at a remote Montana ski resort — at the centre of a deadly conspiracy. When Maya witnesses a murder and finds herself with no one to believe her, she is forced to abandon her identity, her home, and everything she knows in order to survive.
In this conversation, we find out what drew Ava to write a different kind of spy story, told in the first person, set firmly on American soil, and focused on the collateral damage an intelligence operation can inflict on those who stumble, unwittingly, into its path. We learn about the craft decisions behind The Hiding Season: the novel's distinctive time structure, which resists a straightforward linear narrative; the challenge of writing a resourceful but untrained protagonist; and the atmospheric weight that the landscapes of Montana, Texas, and Chicago bring to the story.
We also talk about what it means to reinvent yourself — a theme that resonates far beyond the world of espionage — and about the two figures at the novel's heart: Maya, who must outwit her pursuers on instinct alone, and Riley Maguire, the FBI agent whose motives she cannot quite bring herself to trust.
Drawing on her years working alongside British intelligence and her earlier career as a crime reporter in America, Ava Glass brings a rare depth of knowledge to The Hiding Season, her most personal novel yet.
Produced by Martin Nathan.
Martin Nathan has worked as a labourer, showman, pancake chef, fire technician, and a railway engineer. His short fiction has been published by Tangent Press, HCE and Grist and his poetry has appeared in Finished Creatures,Erbacce and Aesthetica. His novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing.
Story Radio CIC is supported by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and Allia Impact.
