Sure, summer is starting to heat up, but this is ridiculous.

Bookseller magazine is reporting on a new trend that is bringing new passion to some old classics. It began with a recent piece of “fan fiction” loosely based on the Twilight series of books called “Fifty Shades of Grey,” that included some, um, erotic content. The dust jacket describes the story as a “daring, passionately physical affair” in which the lead female character “explores her own dark desires.” Oh yeah, it’s trash.  But it was also a massive success. And it got lots of potential “authors” thinking about the potential of re-examining other, more classic tales of passionate women. And the beast was unleashed…

How about the “the timeless story of a young girl falling for an unattainable older man and getting out of her depth in a sensual world she cannot control”? Good God, it’s “Jane Eyre Laid Bare,” with some new twists on the tale that Charlotte Bronte never intended. But its author, the impossibly-perfectly-named-Eva-Sinclair, explains, “I have changed very little from the original.” Right.

Not going far enough for you? Then you might like “Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts,” the remake that “goes all the way.” Or even better, “Pride and Prejudice: The Hidden Secret” in which Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are hooking up only as a way to provide cover for their more lascivious inclinations. Nice.

“Little Women” too tame? OK, try “Fifty Shades of Louisa May: a Memoir of Transcendental Sex.” The Phantom of the Opera gets revealed in “Unmasqued.” Maid Marion gets “Bound by Honor.” Seriously. (Wait until someone reworks Herman Melville’s classic…think about it.)

And of course, the marketing departments at the publishing houses have already started spinning it. Let’s call it “Lewditure”! No, no, “Literotica”!

Whatever you call this monstrosity, it’s steamy summer reading, and – amazingly – not everybody is displeased. At that bastion of passion known as the Bronte Parsonage Museum in West Yorkshire, the collections manager was asked what she thought of the newer, bluer Jane Eyre. She said – hopefully with a bit of a blush – “anything that brings the Bronte sisters into the limelight has to be a good thing. I am OK about it. It is quite a passionate book anyway.”

Oh deary me.