A collection of twenty-one short stories set during the leisurely time of summer.

"Penguin Canada."

Death by landscape / Margaret Atwood -- Dandelion wine / Ray Bradbury -- Under the jaguar sun / Italo Calvino -- The adulterous woman / Albert Camus -- Le chevalier / Mohamed Choukri -- Summer / Julio Cortázar -- Games at twilight / Anita Desai -- Postcards from surfers / Helen Garner -- On fire / Isabel Huggan -- The wasps / Shimaki Kensaku -- A pornographer woos / Bernard MacLaverty -- The pool / Daphne du Maurier -- Miss Forbes's summer of happiness / Gabriel García Márquez -- Hired girl / Alice Munro -- The new family Robinson / Ludmila Petrushevskaya -- The view from the balcony / Wallace Stegner -- Learning to swim / Graham Swift -- Flesh / Elizabeth Taylor -- Lifeguard / John Updike -- Three players of a summer game / Tennessee Williams -- Early in the summer of 1970 / A.B. Yehoshua.