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From the darling buds of May to the final days of a longed-for holiday lease, no season lends itself to fiction as often or as variously as summer. Over a virtual picnic, Alex Clark and guests discuss the many roles which a summer backdrop provides, not all of them "sunny" in tone.

Novelist Adam Thorpe discusses one of Edith Wharton's lesser known novels, Summer, as well as Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, and F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Having grown up partly in Cameroon, he also shares his experience of trying to recall and write about a childhood experience of intense heat.

Journalist Sarah Shaffi recalls her early love of Enid Blyton's books set during the summer holidays, and discusses how novels such as Sag Harbour by Colson Whitehead or Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon explode the narrowness of the traditional summer book.

Book List – 28 August and 1 September

The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff
Friends Like These by Meg Rossoff
How I Live Now by Meg Rossoff
The Famous Five by Enid Blyton
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles
Just William by Richard Crompton
Summer by Edith Wharton
Sag Harbour by Colson Whitehead
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
The Past by Tessa Hadley
The Tree of Man by Patrick White
Voss by Patrick White
Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon
The Burning World by J. G. Ballard
The Day It Rained Forever by Ray Bradbury
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Pieces of Light by Adam Thorpe
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara