Moms are some of the most resourceful, hardworking, and amazing people on the planet. And as every mom—and anyone who loves a mom—knows, a day of celebration and gratitude for all their efforts isn’t enough. Moms deserve a supportive culture all year round. Because, let’s face it, not only is motherhood full of challenges, but those challenges don’t look the same for all of us.
Whatever motherhood means to you, this list reflects a spectrum of perspectives on this foundational relationship, showing appreciation to all the different moms of the world while also providing some hard-earned laughs and critique. Here are 30 of our favorite audiobooks to give, receive, and listen to this Mother’s Day.
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The best celebrity memoirs for moms
These A-list accounts, read by their celebrity authors, give motherhood a spotlight.
Tina Knowles, mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Knowles’s groundbreaking memoir tells her story in not just her own voice, but those of Beyoncé, Solange, and Kelly too!
In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter, Riley Keough, to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead. Riley got the tapes her mother had recorded for the book and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story—Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish. This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating, and performed alongside legendary actor Julia Roberts.
In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells the wild tale of his coming of age during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. Noah’s virtuoso embodiment of all the characters from his childhood, and his ability to perform accents and dialects effortlessly in English, Xhosa, and Zulu, garnered the Audie Award for Best Male Narrator in 2018. Nevertheless, Noah’s devoted and uncompromising mother—as voiced by her son—steals the show.
Moms need sparkle, and Ali Wong delivers. Dear Girls, written as a series of letters to her daughters, is filled with the comedian's trademark humor, wisdom, and brutal—yet hilarious—honesty. The letters are every bit as sharp and funny as Wong's Netflix specials, but they're also surprisingly moving and enlightening. There's also some great (and gross) advice for expecting parents, so while seasoned moms will be laughing knowingly, parents-to-be might be in for an education as well.
In My Name Is Barbra, living legend and EGOT winner Barbra Streisand tells the story of her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming, and recently won Audiobook of the Year at the 2025 Audie Awards.
When Whoopi Goldberg lost her mother, Emma, in 2010 and her brother Clyde five years later, she felt deeply alone. Now, she voices an unforgettable portrait of their love. As she says, “Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be.” If you're among this lucky few because of your mom, Bits and Pieces is a meaningful way to thank her.
The “Bad Moms” book club
From thrillers to memoirs, these buzzy listens interrogate contemporary motherhood to thrilling effect.
Florence Grimes is a 31-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke, and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her 10-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and heir to a frozen food empire, vanishes, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.
Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a facade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.
Finlay Donovan isn’t really killing it. The new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny, and she sent her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head. When Finlay’s overheard discussing the plot of her new novel with her agent, she’s mistaken for a contract killer and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet ... and soon discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than she thought.
Jennette McCurdy’s stardom was her mother’s dream, not hers. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, the iCarly star examines how her growing fame made her mom ecstatic, while riddling Jennette with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing that manifested into eating disorders, addiction, and unhealthy relationships. As her celebrity rises and her mother dies of cancer, Jennette discovers therapy, quits acting, and embarks on recovery as she decides for the first time what she really wants.
In Saumya Dave’s provocative new novel, CEO Maya Patel has it all: her own startup, a doting husband, influencer status, and a new baby. But behind closed doors, Maya’s drowning. Enter #Girlboss Liz Anderson, who introduces her to an experimental supplement that erases female guilt. At first, it’s the perfect antidote to Maya’s self-blame and imposter syndrome. There's just one catch—for Maya to truly “have it all,” she has to be willing to risk it all.
The creators of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast challenge outdated notions of what being a “good” mother means, inviting moms of all kinds to embark on a healing journey that unlearns old scripts and shows that you can be a little bad, and still do a lot of good for your kids and yourself. Jamilah and Erica take us through their own journeys as single mothers raising children, navigating relationships, and finding themselves as they redefine motherhood on their own terms.
In Miranda July’s second novel, a semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom.
The best fiction for moms
These bestselling novels make perfect presents for book-loving moms.
Did you know Kristin Hannah almost became a lawyer—until her mother convinced her to follow her dreams? Among her many gifts, Hannah has the unique ability to take a well-known historical event and weave it with a captivating human story. The Women pays tribute to the nurses who served in the Vietnam War, with heroine Frankie McGrath as their vessel. Narrator Julia Whelan traces Frankie’s sweeping, poignant journey from naive young woman to a bold and committed nurse.
Beth and her gentle husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. A farming mishap reintroduces Beth to her old love, Gabriel, who has returned to the village with a young son who reminds Beth of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences.
In this award-winning Audible Original, playwright Madhuri Shekar digs into the mother-daughter relationship while paying tribute to maternal intuition. The multicast drama is told primarily via phone calls between a young American woman named Pallavi and her Delhi-based mother, Usha, who desperately wants Pallavi to get married. But when Pallavi meets someone, the story takes a breathless turn as Usha’s dreams for her daughter collide with supernatural forces and her own dark past.
Insightful and buoyant, Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel feels as warm as being hugged by eight arms at once. Remarkably Bright Creatures revolves around absence, as its humans (all charmingly performed by Marin Ireland) take solace in the routines that keep the Sowell Bay Aquarium afloat. But it’s Marcellus (voiced by octopus aficionado Michael Urie) who connects the dots in their stories to unravel a profound lesson about the ways love can hide in plain sight.
In this Audie-winning romance from bestselling author Kennedy Ryan, Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. She’s a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.
It’s the 1960s, and women, even ones as brilliant as Elizabeth Zott, are not welcome in laboratories. But when a grumpy, Nobel–nominated genius falls for Elizabeth’s mind, she learns what chemistry feels like outside the lab. A few years later, Elizabeth, now a single mother, hosts Supper at Six, a TV show that explains the chemistry of baking. As her audience grows, so do the complications. After all, a cooking show centered on opening women’s minds doesn’t quite fit the status quo.
Amy Tan’s beautiful novel The Bonesetter's Daughter follows the story of a mother and daughter living in San Francisco. Ruth Young has always had a difficult relationship with her now-widowed mother, LuLing. But now that LuLing is getting older and her memories are beginning to fail her, she shares writings with her daughter that reveal secrets of her past in China—and perhaps also open a pathway to reconciliation and understanding for the pair.
Spanning five decades, Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House centers on Maeve and Danny Conroy, siblings bound by abandonment, loss, and a shared obsession with their childhood home, a stunning mansion in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Danny, who is several years younger and protected by his strong yet vulnerable sister, tells their story, and narrator Tom Hanks captures his voice in all its bemusement, bitterness, and tenderness.
The best nonfiction for moms
From memoir to history, these provocative listens shed light on mothering and womanhood.
When Nancy Reddy had her first child, she found herself confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—ever available, patient, and invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong? In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.
After becoming disabled, Jessica Slice had done the hard work of disentangling her worth from productivity and learning how to prepare for an unpredictable and fragile world. Despite evidence to the contrary, nondisabled people often worry that disabled people cannot keep kids safe and cared for. In Unfit Parent, Slice argues that disabled bodies and minds give us the hopeful perspectives and solutions we need for transforming a system that has left parents exhausted, stuck, and alone.
When New York Times internet culture critic Amanda Hess was pregnant with her first child, she was rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own. A routine ultrasound had detected an abnormality, and Hess reached for her phone for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search sucked her into the destabilizing morass of the internet. Second Life is a critical record of our digital age that reveals the unspoken ways our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology.
Shonda Rhimes might be most famous as the creator of TV blockbusters like Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton, but she deserves just as much recognition as an author. Her memoir Year of Yes is iconic—and for moms who haven’t heard it, Mother’s Day is a great time to say yes! Rhimes narrates with the enthusiasm and encouragement listeners would expect from an audiobook that's about saying yes to every opportunity, covering topics from parenting and creativity to success and feminism.
For many mothers, adoption is a wonderful opportunity to bond with a child. But for adopted children, the bond can be complicated. In Given Away, Korean adoptee Glenn Morey and his wife, Julie Morey, interview 100 Korean adoptees from across the globe. As thousands of children had their lives upended with the rise of international adoption, leaving them to navigate trauma and a search for their own identity, this listen explores individual journeys of survival, family, and strength.
Clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy has a radical parenting philosophy based on a simple but profound truth—no parent or kid is “bad.” As a mom to three herself, Dr. Becky guides parents through tantrums, sibling rivalry, anxiety, and other child-rearing conundrums. This uplifting, author-narrated listen is as much about self-development as child-rearing, and new and seasoned moms alike will come away empowered to set their kids up for a lifetime of resilience.
When Sarah Hoover got pregnant, her life began to unravel. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. And when her son was born, there was no ... joy. Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. With the help of a doctor’s diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience—she was drowning in postpartum depression—and that she wasn’t a bad mother or a failed woman.
Parenting an anxious child makes parents anxious. When your child feels anxiety, panic, worry, or sadness, it can make you feel anxious, panicked, worried, or sad, too, making support more difficult. Parents will learn what is going on in their child's brain and body when anxiety strikes, and what they can do to help. Help! My Child’s Anxiety Is Giving Me Anxiety is designed to fit each family’s specific requirements, replenish confidence, and put the positivity and pleasure back into parenting.
Reporter and radio producer Abigail Leonard blends reporting, research, and history as she follows four women—Anna from Finland, Tsukasa from Japan, Sarah from the US, and Chelsea from Kenya—through the first year of motherhood. As nations debate paid leave, universal daycare, reproductive health care, and family tax incentives, Four Mothers offers an intimate, moving portrait of what those policies mean for parents on the ground—and considers what modern families really want.
