Here is the continuation of Cleveland.com’s picks for this fall’s best reading…

I just received I See You Everywhere for my birthday, so that is on the very top of my TBR list (thanks, Mom!).  I’m also looking forward to Sea of Poppies and The Longest Trip Home…  The Blue Cotton Gown sounds interesting.
Has anyone read any of these yet?
photo credit: Matt McGee

“The Blue Cotton Gown” by Patricia Harman is a frank, absorbing memoir from a midwife at a tiny West Virginia health clinic. The book recounts the sexual, financial and family histories of her patients, and of the author herself, who struggles with her marriage to the clinic doctor and her own burnout. (Beacon Press, 289 pp., $24.95)

“Chagall” by Jackie Wullschlager is worthy of an art lover’s gasp, a biography of the great figurative painter, born poor in Russia, who wandered Europe during its upheaval and took the shtels of his youth as inspiration. With 40 full-color reproductions and original research from the chief art critic of the London Financial Times. (Knopf, 592 pp., $40).

“The Eleventh Man” by Ivan Doig is a novel in which the entire starting lineup of a 1941 Montana college football team enlists after Pearl Harbor. The title figure is the former player pulled out to write war propaganda on his teammates and is unhappy with the job. Doig, a Montana sage, expands nicely from his Western base. (Harcourt, 406 pp., $26)

“Emily Post” by Laura Claridge is a biography of the woman whose sharp advice has followed us into the 21st century — Joan Didion called Post’s writing on grief the most useful she read. The author does deft, intriguing work in the book, subtitled “Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners.” (Random House, 525 pp., $30)

“The English Major” by Jim Harrison is a road novel about the 60-year-old title character’s attempt to start over when his dog dies, his wife of 38 years dumps him and then maneuvers the Michigan family farm out from under him. The author of 25 books is known for his joie de vivre and his wit. (Grove Press, 2542 pp., $24)

“I See You Everywhere” by Julia Glass is from the Manhattan novelist who won the National Book Award for “Three Junes.” Her latest femme-centric book evolves over 25 years between two sisters — one a wildlife biologist and a rebel, the other a responsible arts editor who chafes against her more conventional life. (Pantheon, 287 pp., $24.93)

“The Longest Trip Home” by John Grogan is the author’s attempt to bring lightning down into the sweet spot that sold over 4 million copies of “Marley & Me.” This new memoir tells of Grogan’s Catholic, Detroit boyhood, his parents’ woe when he leaves the faith, and how he faces their mortality. (William Morrow, 331, $25.95)

“A Most Wanted Man” by John le Carre is the latest novel from the master who gave us George Smiley in “The Spy who Came in from the Cold.” The new story starts with a half-starved young Russian Muslim smuggled into post 9/11 Hamburg with an improbable amount of cash, triggering the interest of multiple spy agencies. (Scribner, 323 pp., $28)

“Poe’s Children” edited by Peter Straub, is an anthology of cutting-edge horror writers, featuring a chilling story from Clevelander Dan Chaon, “The Bees,” about a man haunted by past mistakes. The 24 tales include work from Kelly Link, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Carroll and Elizabeth Hand. (Doubleday, 534 pp., $26.95)

“Roads to Quoz” by William Least Heat-Moon, who made his mark with “Blue Highways,” the 1982 meander along the America less traveled. Here he traces the southern half of the Louisiana Purchase, watching for “quoz” — anything out of the ordinary. He collects stories and eccentrics, as he did in earlier books. (Little, Brown, 563 pp., $27.99)

“Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh is the epic novel predicted to wow lovers of the English language. Ghosh, best known for “The Glass Palace,” sets his new story just before the Opium Wars that roiled India in the 19th century, and he places his characters aboard a ship transporting “coolies” and outlaws. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 512 pp., $26)

“The Shadow Factory” by James Bamford, whose first book, 1982′s “The Puzzle Palace” unlocked secrets of the National Security Administration. This time, he probes the agency’s activities “from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” Embargoed until Oct. 14. (Doubleday, 416 pp., $27.95).

“To Siberia” by Per Petterson, the Norwegian whose 2007 book in English, “Out Stealing Horses,” became an international triumph. Now, he turns his spare, deliberate prose to the story of a brother and sister, whose grandfather has committed suicide and whose village is imperiled by oncoming Third Reich planes. (Graywolf, 245 pp., $22)

“Tried by War” by James McPherson, the historian who won a Pulitzer for his Civil War classic, “Battle Cry of Freedom,” turns his eye toward Abraham Lincoln as commander in chief, an idea McPherson argues that Lincoln essentially invented. Full of humanizing touches and fluid prose. (Penguin, 329 pp., $35)

“The Widows of Eastwick” by John Updike catches up with the trio of characters he created for his 1984 novel, “The Witches of Eastwick,” as they outlive their subsequent husbands and return to the Rhode Island seaside town where they made mischief three decades ago. Early word has been lukewarm. (Knopf, 303 pp., $24.95)

Welcome back!