Mother’s Day is looming. What better way to honor the mothers in your lives than with a good book?

 

Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood by Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, and Pamela Ferdinand (Little, Brown; hardcover, $24.99) chronicles how, one by one, three professionally successful women set out to achieve motherhood — using donor sperm, if necessary. As luck would have it, none of the women wind up using the vials. Instead, they find love the old-fashioned way, and the journey is riveting. 

  

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, paperback, $14) is a penetrating portrait of an acerbic junior high teacher in small-town Maine who, despite her crusty outer layer, longs for a sense of connection. The story of her visit to her semi-estranged son in New York will offer a different perspective to anyone who has ever wrestled with a difficult mother.

 

Which brings us to a shameless plug for my very own Saving Gracie: How one dog escaped the shadowy world of American puppy mills (Wiley; hardcover, $21.99) Single mother of three Linda Jackson finds her maternal skills tested in an entirely new way when she adopts Gracie, a sickly, emotionally deprived Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Your animal loving friends will cheer her on as she learns to bond with this needy but deserving dog.