'We had been in the cottage for a week when the cormorant was delivered, that October evening.'

When a young family inherit a remote mountain-side cottage in north Wales, giving them the chance to change the course of their lives and start over, the one condition of the will seems strange but harmless. They are to care for a cormorant until the end of its life.

But the bird is no tame pet, and within its natural state of wildness there is a malevolent intelligence and intent towards sharp, unexpected violence. However, it is the fascination it holds for Harry, the couple’s precious only child, that really threatens their dreams of rural contentment.

Stephen Gregory's debut novel, The Cormorant, was first published in the UK in 1985 by William Heinemann (first published in the US by St Martin's Press, 1986, by White Wolf in 1992, and more recently by Valancourt Books in 2010). Not only did the book win the Somerset Maugham Award and Young Writer's Award (Wales Arts Council) in 1985, it was also adapted into a BAFTA-winning BBC television film in 1993, directed by Peter Markham and starring Ralph Fiennes. The book has recently been re-optioned to be made as a feature film, by SUMS Media, to be directed by Sebastian Godwin.

The Cormorant has been translated into German as Der Kormoran (Droemer Knaur, 1989), into Polish as Kormoran (Nowa, 1990) and into Italian as Il cormorano (Edizionie Elliott, 2015). In 2021, The Cormorant was republished by Parthian Books.