Great books surely your mom will love

Six shopping days left until Mother's Day. Here are some new releases that Mom might like:

THE PAPER GARDEN: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72, by Molly Peacock (Bloomsbury, $30)

This beautifully designed volume examines the artwork of Mary Delany (1700-1788), an English gentlewoman who, in her eighth decade, began creating exquisite images of flowers from cut pieces of paper -- a kind of proto-collage. "The Paper Garden" reproduces many examples of Delany's work -- now housed in the British Museum -- and recounts Delany's biography (she was friends with luminaries such as George Frederic Handel and Jonathan Swift), along with the story of the author's own decades-long fascination with her. There's an inspirational lesson here, delivered with minimum schmaltz: You're never too old to find your vocation.

THE MEMORY PALACE, by Mira Bartók (Free Press, $25)

Artist Mira Bartók and her sister grew up in the maelstrom of their mother's madness. Bartók's poignant book is a remembrance of this woman, a piano prodigy whose early promise was blotted out by schizophrenia; Norma ends up homeless, violent and estranged from her daughters, who can no longer handle her and make the agonizing decision to cut off contact. But when the author suffers a serious brain injury in a car accident, she seeks out her mother, now living in a shelter and diagnosed with cancer, in an attempt to make sense of her past. "The Memory Palace" explores the mysterious power of mother love, which endures despite illness, separation and the passage of time.

THE WILDER LIFE: My Adventures in the Lost World of 'Little House on the Prairie,' by Wendy McClure (Riverhead, $25.95)

McClure is a children's book editor and blogger who decided to revisit a favorite children's classic that happens to be a favorite -- make that an obsession -- of millions: The "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Not content just to read the whole yellow-covered set (along with the "sequels"), she sets out to follow the Ingalls family's pioneer journey and encounters the books' many bonnet-wearing, butter-churning fans.

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PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM, by Kyung-Sook Shin (Knopf, $24.95)

A big bestseller in Korea, this novel (translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim) is about one family's desperate search for its mother, after she is separated from her husband in a crowded Seoul train station. Narrated by four different family members, "Please Look After Mom" paints a portrait of the missing woman, a self-sacrificing, illiterate rural woman whose family only begins to appreciate her once she's gone.