13 Books Bird Lovers Will Flock To

When her husband’s plane goes down, ornithologist Ana Gathreaux rushes to the crash site off the coast of a remote island. There, she waits for some sign of survival and observes family members of the other victims in mourning. Brad Kessler beautifully weaves his characters’ losses with observations about migratory birds, poetry, and the uniqueness of grief.

BIRD CLOUD is Annie Proulx’s stunning ode to her home in the wilderness of Wyoming. While chronicling the construction of her dream house, she became enraptured with the beauty and nature of her surroundings. Peppered with the history of her family and of the region, this memoir has an ample share of feathered friends, all of which are delightfully recorded.

Like the adaptive little brown birds themselves, the “sparrow” Dominika Egorova is cunning, quick, and seductive in this spy thriller. Her job as a state intelligence officer in Russia becomes complicated when she begins to fall for the equally capable CIA officer Nathaniel Nash. What kind of song will Dominika be chirping at the end of this deadly spy game?

This engrossing World War II novel about two sisters in occupied France is aptly named after the bird dubbed the “night songstress.” THE NIGHTINGALE is at once a rich account of life and love and the hidden power of women in wartime. It’s in the darkest hours of war that you hear their song the loudest.

After a tragic event leaves him motherless in New York and in possession of a priceless painting of a small bird, Theo Decker’s path into adulthood becomes bumpy and misguided. His efforts to find some semblance of a family lead him through struggles with alcohol, money woes, and the ever-present guilt of having made a huge mistake at the young age of thirteen.

When her brother goes off to war, Juliet struggles with the absence of her best friend and confidant. Just after she receives a cryptic letter alluding to their secret hideout, named after a raven they rescued as children, he is reported missing in action. What follows is the fierce and arresting story of her journey to find him amidst the chaos of World War II in Italy.

A dreamy foray into a man’s search for his lost cat is broken up into three parts: “The Thieving Magpie,” “Bird as Prophet,” and “The Birdcatcher.” This masterpiece by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is a bizarre and enthralling escapade through Tokyo, rife with intrigue and emotion.

This 1962 classic can now be found on the stage and screen, but only within its pages can you really explore the depths of human nature that author Ken Kesey so adeptly envisioned. After psychiatric patient Randall Patrick McMurphy incites a rebellion amongst his comrades, the birds in this nest are tried by their ward, but in the end not all are able to fly away.

In the face of an arduous task, Anne Lamott harkens back to the advice her father once gave her brother who was struggling to complete a book report on birds: Just tackle it “bird by bird.” This guide to writing and managing life is wrought with humor and pertinent survival skills, and full of advice you won’t want to miss.

A gossipy, completely addictive novel about New York’s 1950s elite—known as “Swans”—and the scandalous friendship between socialite Babe Paley and literary legend Truman Capote. Rich in the glamour of the era and with characters pulled from reality, this story will draw you into the scandal of the beautiful, preening birds living life without consequence—until they’re betrayed, that is.

To me, one of the most exciting birds to see in the wild is the almighty hawk. With the help of author T. H. White’s chronicles of this fearsome bird, Helen Macdonald adopts and trains a deadly goshawk and embarks on a journey of rediscovery following the loss of her father.

Set on an idyllic summer island, this novel starts out as an inside look at those who inhabit and visit the East Coast resort location. The colorful cast of locals and lodge workers each harbor secrets of their own, but when tragedy strikes, the small community is consumed with grief. Loss, romance, and the expectations of summer are met in this beachy read.

In THE SPARROW, Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz is tasked with leading a mission to explore a newly discovered planet to make a spiritual connection with its extraterrestrial inhabitants. But when he returns to Earth in 2060 as the mutilated sole survivor of the mission, he falls from grace in the church and faces interrogation from the Vatican about what really happened on Rakhat.