Summers can mean thrillers on the beach or road trips with family or friends.

But on this episode of Selected Shorts, writers including Umberto Echo and Edith Wharton, put a provocative spin on summer travel and summer adventures.

I'm Meg Wallitzer. Please stay with me. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

It's the height of summer, and we hope you are enjoying it to its fullest. I know that in the midst of winter, as I get pummeled down the streets in the sort of gale force winds that

rush between New York City buildings, or watch green shoots fight their way to the surface in our

reluctant spring, part of me is already on the porch, on the beach, on the road. And in that

spirit, we wanted to be sure to bring you a program that suggests some of summer's

delights. Travel, romance, smelly fish, betrayal. Wait, what? Well, here at Selected Shorts, we pride

ourselves on not doing the obvious, and our skillful

quartet of authors feel the same.

In one story, a celebrity author does battle with his hotel.

In the second, a wrong turn on a rural road changes everything.

In the third, a dream comes true, and in the fourth, an old friendship revisits old secrets.

And as an added bonus, we take you around the world, and you don't even need to leave the house

or try to remember what you did with your passport.

Italian author Umberto Echow is best known for his international bestseller, The Name of the Rose,

but he's not only a master of religious conspiracy theories. In this playful story, published in the Paris Review in 1994,

How to Travel with a Salmon, he's the butt of his own joke. And it's a masterpiece of

comic escalation. It's voiced by Jin Ha, known for his work in Hamilton and on television

in such shows as devs and

Love Life.

And here he is channeling Umberto Echo in How to Travel with a Salmon, translated by William

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