A young family receives a welcome surprise when old Uncle Ian dies and leaves them a cottage in north Wales. For Ian's nephew and his wife Ann, it seems a stroke of incredible good fortune, enabling them to leave their unfulfilling lives in the city for a newfound freedom in the remote seaside cottage. There's just one catch. Uncle Ian's will has a strange condition: the couple must care for his pet cormorant or forfeit the bequest. They think nothing of it at first: Uncle Ian was eccentric, and the bird is amusing in a way. But when the cormorant begins to show a violent and malevolent side, they soon find that Uncle Ian's gift may not be a blessing, but a curse.

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 followed by The Woodwitch and The Blood of Angels, all written in and around the mountains of Snowdonia. After a year as a screenwriter in Hollywood, alongside the notorious film director William Friedkin, 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 and using a bird here and there as a focus of each story. 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.