10 Books Mom Will Love This Mother’s Day

April 14 2023
Share 10 Books Mom Will Love This Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is May 14 this year, which means, if you act now and purchase a present, it should safely arrive beforehand. Spare yourself the stress of greeting Mom without a gift (and preventing her from rolling her eyes at another late-gift-arrival excuse) by checking out these best books to match with any kind of bookish mom.

Explore our recommendations below, and for more gift ideas, check out Simon & Schuster’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide!

One Italian Summer
by Rebecca Serle

Calling all daughters! ONE ITALIAN SUMMER is the perfect book for Mom this Mother’s Day, plus it’s new in paperback! Rebecca Serle’s magical novel follows Katy Silver in the aftermath of her mother, Carol’s, death. Carol was everything to Katy—so much so that after her passing, Katy decides to take the trip that she and her mother had been planning before she fell ill. It is her chance to decompress and grieve . . . until a younger version of Carol suddenly appears and the two strike up a friendship. With a love interest added for good measure, this book is also a solid pick for Mom to bring back to book club.

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One Italian Summer
Rebecca Serle

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In this “magical trip worth taking” (Associated Press), the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about the transformational love between mothers and daughters set on the breathtaking Amalfi Coast.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.

And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.

“Rebecca Serle is known for her powerful stories that tug at the heartstrings—and her latest is just as unforgettable” (Woman’s World) as it effortlessly shows us how to move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.

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The Hard Parts
by Oksana Masters & Cassidy Randall

If your mom is looking to be inspired and moved to tears (in a good way!), Oksana Masters’ memoir, THE HARD PARTS, will do the trick. The story of the US’s most decorated winter Paralympic (or Olympic, for that matter) athlete who overcame the physical challenges caused by the Chernobyl disaster, Oksana shares her journey from an abusive orphanage system to her salvation in America. Her astonishing journey includes a series of dark tunnels, but with her mother’s love, she managed to find a way to the light.

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The Hard Parts
Oksana Masters & Cassidy Randall

In this jaw-dropping story of triumph over adversity, Oksana Masters, the United States’s most decorated winter Paralympic or Olympic athlete, tells her story of overcoming extraordinary Chernobyl disaster–caused physical challenges to create a life that, by example, challenges everyone to push through what is holding them back.

Oksana Masters was born in Ukraine—in the shadow of Chernobyl—seemingly with the world against her. She was born with one kidney, a partial stomach, six toes on each foot, webbed fingers, no right bicep, and no thumbs. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right, and she was missing both tibias.

Relinquished to the orphanage system by birth parents daunted by the staggering cost of what would be their child’s medical care, Oksana encountered numerous abuses, some horrifying. Salvation came at age seven when Gay Masters, an unmarried American professor who saw a photo of the little girl and became haunted by her eyes, waged a two-year war against stubborn adoption authorities to rescue Oksana from her circumstances.

In America, Oksana endured years of operations that included a double leg amputation. Still, how could she hope to fit in when there were so many things making her different?

As it turned out, she would do much more than fit in. Determined to prove herself and fueled by a drive to succeed that still smoldered from childhood, Oksana triumphed in not just one sport but four—winning against the world’s best in elite rowing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, and road cycling competitions. Now considered one of the world’s top athletes, she is the recipient of seventeen Paralympic medals, the most of any US athlete of the Winter Games, Paralympic or Olympic.

This is Oksana’s astonishing story of journeying through a series of dark tunnels—and how, with her mother’s love, she finally found her way into the light. Her message to anyone who doesn’t fit in: you can find a place where you excel—where you have worth.

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Fellowship Point
by Alice Elliott Dark

Best friends Agnes Lee, a childless children’s book writer, and Polly Wister, devoted wife and mother, have spent every summer on Fellowship Point—a secluded peninsula in Maine. Both are shareholders in a generations-old land partnership, but when Agnes seeks to convince Polly to create a trust to donate the land for its protection, she must forego her allegiance to her family and her history. A portrait of class divides, land disputes, and familial bonds, this novel is perfect for the mom who wants all the tea.

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Fellowship Point
Alice Elliott Dark

The masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century.

Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.

Polly Wister has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, and philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She exalts in creating beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?

Agnes’s designs are further muddied when an enterprising young book editor named Maud Silver sets out to convince Agnes to write her memoirs. Agnes’s resistance cannot prevent long-buried memories and secrets from coming to light with far-reaching repercussions for all.

Fellowship Point reads like a classic 19th-century novel in its beautifully woven, multilayered narrative, but it is entirely contemporary in the themes it explores; a deep and empathic interest in women’s lives, the class differences that divided us, the struggle to protect the natural world, and, above all, a reckoning with intimacy, history, and posterity. It is a masterwork from Alice Elliott Dark.

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The Secret Book of Flora Lea
by Patti Callahan Henry

Evacuated to the English countryside as World War II erupts, sisters Hazel and Flora move into a cottage on the Thames River with another family. To protect her younger sister’s innocence, Hazel tells Flora a fairy tale about a magical land where the two, alone, can escape. When Flora suddenly disappears, Hazel is left carrying the guilt—doing so well into adulthood. That is, until a mysterious book arrives at her door set in the imaginary world that only she and Flora knew about. Thus begins a quest to find out the truth behind Flora’s disappearance that will captivate any bookish mom in need of a reminder about the power of storytelling. For added brownie points with Mom, consider getting her a second book, like one of these recommended by SECRET BOOK OF FLORA LEA's author, Patti Callahan Henry. And if that doesn’t do it, why not make this gift into a book bundle, including all these books that author Patti Callahan Henry recommends.

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The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Patti Callahan Henry

When a woman stumbles across a mysterious children’s book, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed in this “transporting, heartfelt, and atmospheric” (Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author) novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis.

1939: Fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora evacuate their London home for a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the Aberdeen family in a charming stone cottage, Hazel distracts her young sister with a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own: Whisperwood.

But the unthinkable happens when Flora suddenly vanishes after playing near the banks of the River Thames. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, carrying the guilt into adulthood.

Twenty years later, Hazel is back in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore for a career at Sotheby’s. With a cherished boyfriend and an upcoming Paris getaway, Hazel’s future seems set. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing a picture book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Hazel never told a soul about the storybook world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years? Or is something sinister at play?

For fans of Kate Morton, Janet Skeslien Charles, and Kristin Hannah, this is a “fantastical” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) celebration of sisterhood and the magic of storytelling wrapped up in a “heartrending, captivating tale of family, first love, and fate” (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author).

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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
by Maggie Smith

YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL by the poet Maggie Smith is perfect for the introspective mother. This memoir recounts the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself. It touches on all aspects of motherhood while also exploring what it means to live a life of individual intention—in other words, writing a story that is wholly your own. With reflections on family life, secrets, angers, and forgiveness, Maggie Smith’s prose will empower and encourage. 

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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Maggie Smith

“[Smith]...reminds you that you can...survive deep loss, sink into life’s deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The bestselling poet and author of the “powerful” (People) and “luminous” (Newsweek) Keep Moving offers a lush and heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age.

“Life, like a poem, is a series of choices.”

In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

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Magpie
by Elizabeth Day

For the mom who’s looking for a thrill, there’s no better shock to the system than a good old-fashioned psychological suspense. Especially one that concerns a couple desperately seeking to enter parenthood. To that end, Marisa and Jake are willing to let a renter into their home in order to make some extra money to focus on their dream of having a family. All is well until the renter, Kate, begins to cozy up to Jake—a little too close for Marisa’s comfort. Boundaries are pushed and narrative tropes are turned on their heads, leaving MAGPIE readers left with a chilling, twisting conclusion. 

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Magpie
Elizabeth Day

She has almost everything. The rest she’ll take.

For fans of Gone Girl and The Perfect Nanny, a taut, psychological suspense novel about a perfect couple and their seemingly perfect roommate—that is until she threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create.

Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple. And Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate—and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for the baby of their dreams.

Except—no one is truly perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly-familiar with Jake. But Marisa doesn’t let it concern her, knowing that soon Kate will be gone, and it will just be her, Jake, and their future baby.

Conceiving a baby is easier said than done, though, and Jake and Marisa’s perfect relationship is put to the test through months of fertility treatments and false starts. To make matters worse, Kate’s boundary-pushing turns into an all-out obsession—with Jake, with Marisa, and with their future child. Who is this woman? Why does she seem to know everything about Marisa and Jake?

In her quest to find out who Kate really is, Marisa might destroy everything she’s worked so hard to create—her perfect romance, her perfect family, and her perfect self.

Jake doesn’t know the half of what Marisa has created—and what she stands to lose.

For fans of Gone Girl and The Perfect Nanny, Magpie is a tense and twisting novel about mothers and children, envy and possession, and the dangers of getting everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

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Soil
by Camille T Dungy

A story tailor-made for the mother most at home in the garden, SOIL is Camille T. Dungy’s real-life journey of diversifying her garden despite strict restrictions imposed by the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado, where she resided. A beautifully written treatise by the National Book Critic Circle Criticism finalist on how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, SOIL explores our relationship to nature and to one another in an effort to better understand what it means to be “home.”

 

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Soil
Camille T Dungy

A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mothers Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.

In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

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The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls

An excellent Mother’s Day gift this year (and every year since its original publication), THE GLASS CASTLE is an enduring memoir from Jeannette Walls that continues to astonish and affect readers. Fair warning, it’s a raw, hard-hitting story about Walls’ dysfunctional yet wildly imaginative family. It is also the beautiful story of a fearless young woman overcoming hardships that is capable of inspiring readers of any generation. And, if you’re already convinced that THE GLASS CASTLE will resonate, consider bundling it with Walls’ latest book HANG THE MOON.

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The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose stubborn nonconformity was both their curse and their salvation. In this astonishing memoir—the basis of the forthcoming film starring Brie Larson—Walls recounts how her family’s dysfunction left her and her siblings to fend for themselves, weather their parents’ betrayals, and finally find the resources and will to leave home.

Read a review of THE GLASS CASTLE here.

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Camera Girl
by Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Any mom will love this illuminating new biography of the young Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, which comes out this May 2. CAMERA GIRL brings to cinematic life Jackie’s years as a young, single woman trying to figure out who she wanted to become. Chafing at the expectations of her family and the societal limitations placed on women in that era, Jackie pursued her dream career as a writer. Set primarily during the years of 1949 to 1953, when Jackie was in her early twenties, the book recounts in heretofore unrevealed detail the story of her late college years and her early adulthood as a working woman.

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Camera Girl
Carl Sferrazza Anthony

An illuminating new biography of the young Jackie Bouvier Kennedy that covers her formative adventures abroad in Paris; her life as a writer and photographer at a Washington, DC, newspaper; and her romance with a dashing, charismatic Massachusetts congressman who shared her intellectual passion.

Camera Girl brings to cinematic life Jackie’s years as a young, single woman trying to figure out who she wanted to become. Chafing at the expectations of her family and the societal limitations placed on women in that era, Jackie pursued her dream career as a writer. Set primarily during the years of 1949 to 1953, when Jackie was in her early twenties, the book recounts in heretofore unrevealed detail the story of her late college years and her early adulthood as a working woman.

Before she met Jack Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier was the Washington Times-Herald’s “Inquiring Camera Girl,” posing compelling questions to members of the public on the streets of DC and snapping their photos with her unwieldy Graflex camera. She then fashioned the results into a daily column, of which six hundred were published.

Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian and leading expert on First Ladies, draws on these columns and previously unseen archives of Jackie’s writings from this time, along with insights gleaned from interviews he conducted with the former First Lady’s friends, colleagues, and family members. Camera Girl offers a fresh perspective on the woman later known as Jacqueline Kennedy and Jackie O, introducing us to the headstrong, self-assured young woman who went on to be one of the world’s most famous people. It’s a glamorous and surprisingly hard-charging story of a person determined to define herself, told with admiration, empathy, and journalistic rigor.

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MENTIONED IN:

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By Off the Shelf Staff | April 14, 2023

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Photo credit: iStock / -slav-

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