Summer

Wharton's most erotic and lyrical novel, Summer explores a daring theme for 1917 -- a woman's awakening to her sexual needs. Eighteen year-old Charity Royall lives in the small town of North Dormer, ignorant of desire until the arrival of architect Lucius Harney. A sense of fate pervades Summer from its opening on a bright "June" afternoon to its conclusion months later "in the cold autumn moonlight". Like the succulent summer landscape in the Berkshires around them, Charity's romance is lush and picturesque, but its consequences are harsh and real. Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Summer was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written. "Reader Grace Conlin distinguishes both men's and women's voices easily, using hushed, intimate tones to convey the sweetness of the romance. Yet an ephemeral quality in her delivery casts a shadow of reality on the story and reminds the listener that seasons change. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner." -- AudioFile Magazine Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was born in New York and is best known for her stories of life among the upper-class society into which she was born. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. She married in 1885 and was divorced in 1912. In 1894, she began writing fiction, and her novel The House of Mirth (1905) established her as a leading writer. Her novels The Age of Innocence (1920) and Old New York (1924) were each awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and she was the first woman to receive that honor.