Three estranged siblings―and a high-maintenance cockatoo―reunite in a luminous novel about forgiveness, connection, and the complexities of family by the author of Sorry for the Inconvenience.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Farah Naz Rishi’s The Flightless Birds of New Hope, which is out January 1st 2026.
Upon the sudden deaths of their bird-obsessed parents, the three Shah siblings reunite.
Aliza has spent years holding their crumbling family together, caring for their younger brother, Sammy. And Aden, named executor of the estate, finds himself resentfully facing the one member of the family who always got their parents’ undivided love: their famous Bollywood-bopping cockatoo, Coco.
One reckless night, Aden opens Coco’s cage, letting her do what he did a decade ago―fly away from home.
In a panic, the siblings set off to recover her, armed with only Coco’s tracking chip and the fragile hope they might set things right. What they think will be a quick search and rescue becomes a two-week cross-country road trip, where old grudges resurface, relationships are tested, and long-buried dreams stir awake.
As Coco, meanwhile, forges her own path to the past, Aden, Aliza, and Sammy follow―not just the bird, but the possibility of something more: a way back to each other.
Aden Shah’s parents flew before they died, and even he couldn’t miss the morbid punch line in that. After all, no one loved birds more than the Shahs.
Sheriff Elwood had described it like this: Aliya and Jay Shah, for the eighth year running, had wrapped up another successful weekend at the California Exotic Bird Expo in San Francisco. They’d gone out for dinner, just the two of them, and were winding their way back to a hotel outside city limits.
But the route had taken them along a cliffside road—the kind that feels like a scenic thrill in broad daylight but a reckless gamble after dark, especially in a speedy little rental Miata. They took a corner too sharply, lost control, and flew off the edge before plunging down, down, down to an untimely death.
A terrible tragedy, the sheriff had called it. A freak accident. But at least they’d died instantly; the sheriff had offered that detail as consolation, as if that made any of it easier to swallow.
It didn’t.
Now their remains were en route to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where two newly dug plots awaited them at Thompson Memorial Cemetery. Aden’s aunt, Reema khala, was already taking care of everything: the funeral arrangements, the rental car company, and, most important, the transport home of Coco Chanel—the Shahs’ prized Major Mitchell’s cockatoo, who’d been left behind at the hotel.
All that was left was for Aden to show up.
He wondered whether Coco had cried when they didn’t come back. She used to squawk her head off whenever she was left alone for more than five minutes. He could almost hear it, the shrill ringing in his ears.
On the other line, the sheriff had coughed, once—sharp and dry, like he’d swallowed something wrong.
Your aunt will be in touch soon. She, er, sounded like she wasn’t sure you’d pick up if she called first.
Aden’s stomach wrung.
I see.
Anyway, my, uh—condolences. For your loss.
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. What a stupid thing to say to someone who’d just told you your parents were dead.
Aden ended the call and sat there, staring into the silence. It settled in layers: first the quiet hum of his computer. Then the tick of the clock on his wall. Then, finally, the void in his chest.
He’d been barely twenty-one when he decided never to return to New Hope, young enough to believe that distance alone could erase his parents’ existence from his life. It had mostly worked; his mom had stopped trying to reach out about five years ago, when he hadn’t picked up her call on his birthday, again. He still remembered the voicemail she’d left:
I know you don’t want to hear from us, but . . . Aliza’s been asking about you. Not that she’d tell you herself.
An obvious lie.
Except now Aden couldn’t shake the image of his little sister sitting on the edge of the couch at home. Alone now. Wondering whether this was what would finally drag him back.
His own leather couch crinkled beneath him—a jarring squawk that bit into the quiet. The same couch where he and Sẹ̀yí had spent lazy weekends tangled in blankets, her humming along to the soundtrack of whatever movie they weren’t really watching. The same couch where they’d had The Talk, and eventually, The Breakup.
Now, especially, the couch felt too big, too empty, without her.
He rubbed his face, fingers dragging down his cheeks. Maybe it was time for a new couch. Something to think about when he got back.
Hours slipped away without Aden realizing. The sun had long sunk behind the hills, and now night pressed in, draping the room in darkness. He blinked, trying to shake off the haze, and rubbed at his dry eyes. Mechanically, he reached for his laptop on the coffee table, nearly knocking his vintage glass ashtray to its own untimely death. The ashtray had been a gift from Sẹ̀yí, a remnant of another life teetering on the edge of a cliff.
Aden did not miss the bitter humor in that, either.
He steadied the ashtray, opened his laptop, and stared at the blank email window. A few keystrokes later, he’d sent a curt note to his boss, who didn’t pay him enough for feigned politeness.
Then—chewing his chapped lower lip—he booked a flight to Philadelphia.
Copyright © 2026 by Farah Naz Rishi. From THE FLIGHTLESS BIRDS OF NEW HOPE by Farah Naz Rishi. Reprinted by permission of Lake Union, a division of Amazon Publishing.
