How long it will take to read: With 400 pages of serious prose looming, you might want to clear your calendar for this one.

Useful factoid: If you want to read the book early, Atwood will be “previewing” the novel for passengers of the Queen Mary 2, which leaves New York for Southampton, England, on August 15. It will cost you about $1,300 more than waiting for the book to come out.

You should read it if: You’ve read the previous two books in the trilogy. Otherwise, you should start with Oryx and Crake.

It matters because: Atwood is genuinely engaged with questions of humanity’s future, our impact on the environment and the byproducts of human progress. Her fiction is not easy, but few important works are.

Perfect for: Anyone who is despairing about the state of literature and thinks that serious fiction doesn’t have a future. It does. Here is proof.

Published on September 3 by Nan A. Talese.

Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem

What it’s about: As Lethem told the Los Angeles Times back in April, "It's about American leftists. Specifically, a red-diaper baby generation trying to figure out what it all means, this legacy of American Communism. It's set in Queens and Greenwich Village, another New York neighborhood book, very much about the life of the city.... writing about Greenwich Village in 1958 was really a jump for me, it was as much of an imaginative leap as any of the more fantastical things I've done. But really exciting, too."

How long it will take to read: A couple of listens to your favorite Yo La Tengo album; less time than a DIY butchering class; but longer than an ironic viewing of Sixteen Candles. Should we keep going or do you get the idea?

Useful factoid: Lethem once lived in Brooklyn but now teaches at Pomona College in Southern California, having maligned the borough that made him famous, saying that it has become “cancerous with novelists.” Accordingly, Dissident Gardens will be set in the Village and Queens, in the Sunnyside Gardens community that was famously planned by urbanist Lewis Mumford.

It matters because: Fortress of Solitude was 10 years ago. Since then, Lethem has done plenty, but nothing to equal that novel’s success. The stakes for Dissident Gardens are thus high.

Perfect for: Anyone who has ever set foot in Brooklyn, Oakland or Austin, as well as parts of Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. You may enjoy it if you live in Queens, too.

Published on September 10 by Doubleday.

Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

What it’s about: Penguin says the novel will be set "in the lull between the collapse of the dotcom boom and the terrible events of September 11." A short excerpt from the book appeared in a Penguin marketing catalog earlier this year. But don’t expect the famously media-averse Pynchon to hold court at your local Barnes & Noble.

How long it will take to read: Considering that a page of Pynchon roughly translates to about 10 pages from a normal author, you should definitely have this one done by Thanksgiving 2015.