The Cormorant
This book will be released in April 2021
WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD
"A first-class terror story with a relentless focus that would have made Edgar Allan Poe proud." New York Times
'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.
A Somerset Maugham Award Winner when it was first published, the tale of The Cormorant continues to exert its considerable power.
Stephen Gregory has been called a horror writer, although his novels and short stories reflect a love of the countryside and especially his interest in birds. The Cormorant, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was made into a BBC television film, was written in and around the mountains of Snowdonia.
After a year as a screenwriter in Hollywood, Stephen spent fifteen years teaching in Borneo, and during the long, hot tropical evenings he wrote four more novels, set back home in rural England and Wales. He now lives in France with his wife Chris, in a small house beside the river Vienne, while they're slowly rebuilding a 16th-century fortified farmhouse.