Some children are different. As parents, we have dreams and goals for our kids, but they are individuals with minds, lives, and, sometimes, a fate all their own. The Spark is a memoir of a mother, Kristine Barnett, and her son, Jacob, a special-needs child. Kristine is an unusual woman in her own right. Growing up Quaker in rural Indiana, her grandfather was an inventor and successful designer for the automotive industry, and he had a huge and lasting impact on Kristine. Raised in a hardworking and creative environment, Kristine married and opened a very successful, very progressive day care center; then she gave birth to Jake. She took no maternity leave and her son was raised from infancy at the center. However, Jake's development slowed and he was soon diagnosed with autism.

Kristine followed all of the usual treatments for autism and therapies of the traditional approach, but she found Jake, like most autistic kids, was unusual. And she often found that the traditional therapies Jake was receiving focused more on what he couldn't do, rather than his strengths and what he was able to do. Jake stared at the walls (a common behavior for someone autistic) until Kristine noticed that he stuck to a rigid daily schedule and was determining the time by the movement of the shadows on the walls. Jake would string yarn in every room in the house, but in each instance the shapes Jake made were geometric patterns. He would dump hundreds of crayons on the floor only to arrange them in a true representation of the rainbow, again from staring at the prism effects on the wall. On a trip to their local Barnes & Noble, Jake became so obsessed with an astronomy textbook that they had to buy it in order to leave the store. I won't spoil this book for you by revealing what becomes of this astronomy textbook and Jake's fascination with the stars, but I will say that The Spark is a remarkable book about people in remarkable situations.

One of the lessons from The Spark that resonates most has to do with defining a disability. Who are we to judge? People are remarkable and they are different. The popular metaphor for this is that Jake and others are wired differently. We all are. What Kristine Barnett suggests is that no matter how people are wired, it is up to us to make the connection that produces the spark. This book is not a how-to on autism, though it may help; rather it is a story of a creative person whose source of inspiration and learning is different than most. If you are looking for a book that can lift the heart as it pulls on its strings, then The Spark may be the right choice.

Mother-daughter dynamics are notoriously complex, but Domenica Ruta's relationship with her mother takes this notion to wildly dysfunctional heights. In With or Without You, Nikki (the author's nickname) invites us into her trash-filled ramshackle house next to a salt marsh in Danvers, Massachusetts, where her sad, introspective childhood and teen years unfold while she remains staunchly loyal to Kathi, her needy, manipulative, drug-addicted selfish mother.

Kathi raises Nikki along with a variety of junkies that come into their lives. It's hard to completely condemn Kathi at first, because while she's clearly not the mother of the year, no matter how broke or high she gets she advocates for Nikki, making sure she's always well-dressed, and ultimately encouraging her to get a scholarship to an elite private school. Kathi wants something better for her daughter. There's no doubt the two love each other in a way that is consuming and enabling, in a way that eventually harms Nikki deeply.

Writing with abandon, Nikki pens raw anecdotes that are both depressing and humorous. The aftermath of living in her mother's house is a self-destructive period. Here is just a sampling of what you'll discover in this riveting memoir.

The early years
"My mother had so little attention to give that sharing her with anything else made me mortally pissed off."
A self-deprecating child, Nikki feels ugly, hairy, lonely. Kathi keeps her home from school to watch old movies, or else takes her daughter on vengeful sprees. Kathi is unpredictable, but predictably selfish. When Nikki is molested by a friend of the family, her mother doesn't confront him because it would rock the boat. Just as Nikki exits childhood, she attempts suicide.

The teen years
"My mother was always hounding me to get pregnant while in high school."
Things begin looking up for Nikki -- she becomes captain of the cheerleading team and class president -- until her peers turn cruel. At home, Kathi sells coke and gives Nikki OxyContin. Nikki's grandmother is a source of comfort and home-cooked meals, proving her love with special Italian nicknames for Nikki -- meaning "chickpea" and "whore."

Alcohol and beyond
"My friends in recovery tell me you finally get sober the day before you are supposed to die."
Nikki temporarily moves across the country when Kathi blames her for all her problems and demands money. Nikki finds bittersweet joy working with seniors with dementia, as she indulges in hardcore drinking to stifle her feelings -- and then things spiral out of control.

This is a heartbreakingly honest, emotionally graphic memoir. We root for Nikki's perseverance and recovery, but understand that there may be no resolution. It is Domenica Ruta's voice, with its heat and guts, that makes this such a striking read, a window into a life still being lived one day at a time.

Rosamund Lupton has taken every mother's nightmare and distilled it into a strangely soothing detective story in her latest psychological thriller, Afterwards. The premise is macabre: One English morning, when most students are outdoors participating in sports day, their fancy private school is suddenly ablaze. Grace races into the building to save her teen daughter, Jenny, but both end up comatose with severe burns. Horrifyingly, Grace's eight-year-old son, Adam, is suspected of arson. We learn this all from an unusual narrator -- Grace's spirit -- whose body lies in the hospital near dead.

Jenny's spirit is hovering as well. In Lupton's version of the Other Side, mother and daughter can see and talk to each other, and can see and hear everyone around them, but their presence goes undetected. Their senses are acute; when their bodies go into crisis mode, colors and light flow and they feel the pull to be reborn. Still, together they try to solve the mystery of who set the fire and whether it was purposely started to harm Jenny. The ghostly pair follow Grace's police detective sister-in-law as the investigation unfolds, frustrated as they begin remembering important facts from that day and realize that someone sinister still wants to finish Jenny off.

What follows is much more than a thriller. There's an emotional immediacy to receiving the story through the perspective of Grace's soul; we're let into the deep love, connection, and sacrifice between parents and children, between husband and wife. Grace longs for her husband, who is determined his wife and child will survive: "I don't think of us going out to dinner … but feel as if we're somewhere wild and lawless and blisteringly exposed, more akin to a lion pair in the Serengeti, protecting their cubs against poachers." She yearns to hold her little son, who has not spoken since the fire, not even to the former teacher he idolized, fired for something awful he denies doing. And as Grace calculatingly measures her ability to save her family, she is left watching from an excruciating distance, as her relationships corrode as deceit, jealousy, and revenge scorch trust.

While Grace and Jenny's bodies still burn from the inside out, there are difficult choices to be faced. Throughout the uneasy experience the reader may have confronting damaged beings and survival rates and children playing with matches and seedy teachers and betrayal, there’s the comfort that comes from the idea of a dreamlike world in which a lost loved one is still there, still looking after us. This is the delicate, moving power of Lupton's prose and what makes her device work in a Lovely Bones fashion; it's raw and offers some justice. There is no end to the lengths Grace will go to help her children, even from beyond her body, and isn't that what the essence of a mother's love is meant to be?

In April 2012, Dara-Lynn Weiss was featured with her young daughter, Bea, in Vogue's "Shape" issue. The article focused on their struggle to bring Bea's weight down to a healthy, normal range. Naïvely, Weiss believed if she shared their challenge she would help other mothers with overweight children. Instead, she became the center of a vicious media maelstrom. While I followed the coverage and was riveted by it, a part of me suspected there was much more to the story. In her controversial memoir, The Heavy, we get the real story.

At seven years old, Bea was four feet four inches tall and ninety-three pounds. Her blood pressure was 124/80. Her BMI was in the ninety-eighth percentile. Her mother was told she was clinically obese. As Weiss explains, "My reaction was the same as if I had been told Bea had a potentially fatal allergy, or diabetes. Her weight pattern was no longer a simple parenting hurdle; it was a medical crisis." The decision to intervene forced Weiss to confront her own painful issues surrounding food and weight.

But Weiss is no mommy dearest, trying to slim down Bea to reach some unrealistic goal. After reading The Heavy, I believe Weiss is a mother who loves her daughter so much that she went to extremes that most of us cannot fathom in order to protect her child. Early on, Weiss enlisted the help of a doctor, but there was very little concrete information available to guide her; she had to make much of it up as she went along. And like any parent, she made mistakes. She writes openly and honestly about these mistakes, including letting her daughter be photographed for the Vogue feature. She admits to making controversial choices, but she is unapologetic about them. Weiss's role in her family is "the heavy" -- the one ultimately responsible for the toughest decisions. She writes: "As for Bea, I wasn't trying to make her slender. That wasn't my job. I just needed her to be healthy."

Agree or disagree with Dara-Lynn Weiss's choices, but read her entire story before passing judgment. She made what she believed were the best decisions for her daughter, given the information available to her at the time. Will these choices end up being in Bea's long-term best interest? The jury is still out, and will be for many years.

Susan Conley's reflections of the two years she spent with her family in Beijing, as told in The Foremost Good Fortune, initially appear to present as a simple travel memoir -- but her story is so much more than a travelogue. As a transplant from Maine, Conley's descriptions of modern China transport us to a crowded, exotic city, awakening our senses with the smells, tastes, and customs as she struggles to help her two young sons adjust. But it is when Conley is diagnosed with cancer that we begin to experience the unexpected: a literal and metaphorical journey to finding one's true self while in a foreign land.

As Conley feels more and more unfamiliar with her own body, she equates China and cancer with cultural isolation. While temporarily back home to receive treatment, she realizes: "I’m struck then by how cancer is itself a kind of cultural dislocation. I feel more removed from myself -- more distanced now from the people I love than I ever did in China." This type of introspection, in this instance about the exile she felt in Beijing and the dire challenges ahead of her, is common in Conley's prose, which is often philosophical.

Still feeling disengaged, Conley returns to Beijing to complete her stay with her family, determined to rebuild her family connections. The opportunity to visit the Great Wall and share the ubiquitous meal of dumplings and Sprite with her children is bittersweet, as she is distracted by fear and the term "reoccurrence," but slowly Conley manages to exhale and be present. When she finds herself bonding with her husband, Tony, in a flea market, haggling over a Buddha statue that she thinks will provide spiritual help and healing, we know that China has transformed into a place that can offer her comfort.

Ultimately, The Foremost Good Fortune is an unflinching memoir of travel, motherhood, and recovery that speaks to anyone with a passion for exploration, both of the world and of the self. We do come to care about Conley and her family throughout her journey, during which she learns a lesson that can be of value to us all: It is indeed possible to be at home wherever you are.

To all the mommies out there, I hope you're having a relaxing day of pampering (forgive the diaper pun). But if it's not exactly what you expected, take heart. Jill Smokler understands, which is why she penned Confessions of a Scary Mommy, a little book of humorous essays that takes an irreverent, honest look at motherhood.

Smokler, a graphic designer turned stay-at-home mom, began a blog a few years ago on which she wrote about the real deal about motherhood: the struggles, competition, and boredom, and the blissful moments, too. Next came her book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, in which she starts each essay with the funniest, saddest, twisted confessional comments from her blog readers that correspond with the theme of the chapter. Some of my favorite chapters are about: the family vacation (nice on paper but you'll need a vacation from your vacation once you get home); the grand efforts to plan the kid's perfect birthday party; the pool as recreation (deathtrap); the mommy wars; guarding your babysitter with your life, and so on. You get the picture, because Smokler speaks the truth.

We know you have precious little time, and luckily, this book can be read in two short sittings because it's that much fun. Also, check out our other ebook recommendations about the good, the bad, and the scary side of mommyhood.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua
Kids not living up to your expectations? Try banning all playdates and enforcing the violin. In this controversial book, Amy Chua rejects Western methods of child rearing and relays her story of extreme parenting, Chinese style.

It's Not About the Pom-Poms, by Laura Vikmanis with Amy Sohn
Remember feeling more put together and fit before having kids? Take some inspiration from the story of a forty-year-old single mom who took up pole dancing, then became the NFL's oldest cheerleader. How's that for teen spirit?

Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman
When an American journalist moves to Paris and notices that French kids are good listeners, great sleepers, and gourmet eaters -- and their parents are relaxed and balanced -- she investigates how on earth this happened and how you can get there, too.

Baby Laughs, by Jenny McCarthy
Funny lady Jenny McCarthy waxes hilarious on the naked truth of new motherhood, including dueling grandmas, husbands expecting sex, lullaby illiteracy, baby manicures, and other amusing, insightful anecdotes about the challenges new parents face.

Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
Enough with the parenting advice from everyone in your life driving you crazy! In these sidesplitting and practical essays, Wilder-Taylor reassures that you can be a good mom and make your own decisions about how to raise your children.

Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation, by Elizabeth Beckwith
So long traditional and earnest parenting guides! Beckwith discusses developing a family philosophy and sticking with it no matter how quirky. Includes strategies like "Don’t Be Afraid to Raise a Nerd" and "Mind Control: Why It’s a Good Thing."

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a female comedienne/actress writes a book on her mishaps in life and love, starting with herself as an awkward child and wrapping up the book with a happy ending of a booming career and some kind of long-term relationship. If this story is, in fact, old news to you, prepare to be refreshed by Rachel Dratch's Girl Walks Into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle. Though the title seems like your typical funny memoir, Dratch's life has been far from typical, and she shares it with us in candid, hilarious prose.

Dratch is probably best known for her stint on "Saturday Night Live," where she was most famous for her "Debbie Downer" sketch. She starts the book asking the question that all of us have perhaps been wondering: "What happened to you?!" The answer is, not much, and everything. Not much by Hollywood standards. Dratch is refreshingly honest about the typecasting she faces in Hollywood (ugly women, mousy secretaries, and butch lesbians), and the way her big break as Jenna on "30 Rock" was crushed by NBC executives. She doesn't shirk from revealing her disappointment, but does not come off as bitter, just matter-of-fact. Plus, not working gave her a chance to get out there and do all the things she'd meant to do, like yoga -- and dating.

Ah, dating in New York. Again, Dratch approaches the well-tread "dating-mishap" genre with humor, but also honesty and self-reflection, which make the stories more meaningful and relatable. Perhaps the self-reflection comes from where her last date led — to a baby! That’s right, Dratch became pregnant after casually dating John for six months. The last portion of the book relays the confusing and messy time that comes from having a baby with someone you've just met.

Of course, at the end of it all, Dratch gets her son, Eli, which is definitely a happy ending. Dratch, however, doesn't try to wrap up the book with a fairy-tale finish of John proposing, or their relationship solidifying. She admits that she has no idea what their relationship is now, or what the future holds, but she's got a tiny, wrinkly hand to hold onto, and that's good enough for her, and along for the ride, it's good enough for us.

All things French seem un petit better, no? French food, fashion, and now, thanks to Pamela Druckerman, parenting. It all started when Druckerman, an American journalist, relocated to Paris with her husband and had kids. Contrary to what she witnessed stateside, she noticed that French parents seem relaxed, confident, and in charge, and French children, from the time they are babies, are calm, good sleepers, and even vegetable lovers. Intrigued, Druckerman set out to investigate what led to this society of chillaxed parents and well-behaved kids. The result? Her thoroughly enjoyable book, Bringing Up Bébé.

Druckerman discovers two unique principles of French parenting. First, the French assume that children, from the time they are babies, are rational creatures, capable of understanding and learning. This idea was developed by Dr. Dolto, who is revered like the French Dr. Spock. If you accept that children are rational, you can teach them to sleep through the night as tiny babies, and when they're older, how to like vegetables or behave in a restaurant. You can also teach them to be sage, "self-controlled but happily absorbed in an activity."

Second, the French take a philosophical approach to child rearing, adopting Rousseau's idea that children must be given space to thrive. With this in mind, the French parent within a cadre, a predictable, coherent framework of rules, whereby they are very strict about limits and boundaries, but allow freedom within them to explore. If children are capable of autonomy, and, in fact, blossom in that realm, parents can leave them be, wait to satisfy their whims, and thereby instill patience and independence.

Overall, the French view children as a part of the family, not its entire focus. This lets parents make decisions that are best for the group, rather than the individual. Unlike the "child-kings" Druckerman sees in American families, who make demands and cannot tolerate frustration, French mothers will say with conviction, "It’s me who decides," and the children accept that. Culturally, these mothers do not feel guilty for saying "no" or taking time for themselves. Instead, "they strike a balance between listening to their children's needs and being clear it's the parents who are in charge." Perhaps it's a type of self-fulfilling prophecy where half the battle is believing in your own authority.

If Carrie Bradshaw from "Sex and the City" were talking to you as a mom living with Mr. Big in Paris, the result would be this book. It's useful, it's escapist and funny, and it makes you want to jaunt off to Paris and have baguettes and hot chocolate. Druckerman's observations will validate any exhausted parent and offers a new, hopeful perspective. You can look at those familiar little faces and know, with a few changes on your part -- voila! -- they, too, can behave like delightful French bébés.

The memoir Blue Nights is an elegiac, intimate meditation on the life of Quintana Roo Dunne Michael (1966-2005), Joan Didion’s (and the late John Gregory Dunne’s) adopted daughter. Didion’s reflections on her time spent with Quintana are cinematic:  “She wove white stephanotis into the thick braid that hung down her back.” As Didion revisits and laments her daughter, “m’ija she was also called,” there are striking truths about motherhood, the mortality of one’s own children, and the failure of memories to give solace. “When I remember the ‘sundries’ I am forced to remember the hotels in which she had stayed before she was six or seven.”

To read Blue Nights is to drop into chic settings, terrifying conclusions, flickering fragments of mother and daughter, and to follow Didion’s way of navigating the void. If Didion cannot — through words — recover her daughter, she can bring her certain immortality, for Quintana’s words live on in Blue Nights: “Where did the morning went?” Perhaps most searing are the vignettes given to Quintana’s world; as an adopted child, there is much for her to ponder. Quintana once left a note for her parents: “Try to imagine the seductive sea if you can, love XX, Q.” Didion’s discoveries about herself as a mother seesaw between incredulity and humility. She knows how to humor, how to lay the ironies before us: the dresses she chose for the trip-never-taken to Saigon, the presence of the New York Yankees at her physical therapy sessions. We are also privy to relevant details of others who enter and exit their lives: Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Griffin Dunne, and Quintana’s biological sister.

There may never be a time when Didion does not hear her daughter “crooning back to the eight-track”: ““I wanna dance.” She does transcend a bardo-like stage of incapacitating grief into perhaps a more enlightened realm, where she shares the words circling her pain. Rarely sentimental, Didion recalls: “One day after she had asked me for a Magic Marker I found her marking off an empty box into ‘drawers,’ or areas meant for specific of these ‘sundries.’ The ‘drawers’ she designated were these: ‘Cash,’ ‘Passport,’ ‘My IRA,’ ‘Jewelry,' and, finally — I find myself hardly able to tell you this — ‘Little Toys.’”

Didion queries her own lament, and hears Quintana’s advice: “Like when someone dies, don’t dwell on it.” As her will to sustain a kind of heroic momentum falters, she nevertheless confronts the impermanence that dogs her. “Meanwhile, like Ntozake Shange, I memorize my child’s face.” How she writes about her relationship with Quintana is an inspiring, courageous achievement. In musical, almost metered prose, the words Didion summons are as present, bright, and deep as the nights are blue, the sharpest resolution of words and blue nights imaginable.