Part of Series
This is 3 stories inside, one about Alice and grimmalkin and those two that hav been published with 3 additional stories in the stort story collection as Spookss Stories witches (uk) or A Coven of witches (us) but with the additions World book day story Spookss tale included in this edition.
The Last Apprentice series follows the terrifying adventures of the Spook's apprentice, Thomas Ward. But Tom's is only one story. There are others...
The Spook himself was once an apprentice. How did he begin his training?
And what of Alice, the young witch who is Tom's closest ally? How did she overcome her dark past?
What did the witch assassin Grimalkin do to become the most deadly and feared witch in the county?
And, collected in a gallery of horrors, discover the rest of the county's menacing villains and relive the vicious battles waged against them.
Enter a land where creatures of the dark creep out of the shadows. Do you dare?
Author
Joseph Delaney is a full time writer living in Lancashire, in the heart of Boggart territory. He is the author of Wardstone Chronicles, Starblade Chronicles, Arena 13, Aberrations and a new book came out in April 2020, Brother Wulf. This is a new spooks story featuring Tom and Alice, but introducing a new character, a young monk called Brother Wulf. He first got the idea for the Spooks series when he moved to the village where he lives now and discovered there was a local boggart - ‘a man like me needs boggarts around’. He made a note in his notebook ‘a story about a man who hunts boggarts’ and years later when he had to come up with an idea at short notice developed this into ‘The Spook’s Apprentice’, the first book in the series. He continues to draw upon the folklore of Lancashire and has acquired much local knowledge over the years which he tweaks and modifies to create his fictional world. Another source of inspiration has been Lancashire's varied and atmospheric landscape. Many of the locations in the County are based on actual places in Lancashire. In the early days of his writing career Joseph worked as a teacher at a Sixth Form College: his subjects were English, Film and Media Studies. He used to get up early and write every morning before work. That way he could write a book a year – which promptly got rejected! When the Americans bought the series he decided to give up teaching and write full time. Prior to teaching he worked as an engineer in his twenties, completing an apprenticeship just like Tom Ward in the spook’s books. Joseph describes his method of writing as a process of discovery. He doesn’t plot too far ahead and often doesn’t know what is going to happen until he writes it down. In other words he makes it up as he goes along. He prefers writing dialogue to description, in which he says he is a minimalist and leaves much to the reader’s imagination. Joseph has three children and nine grandchildren and is a wonderful public speaker available for conference, library and bookshop events. The Spook's Apprentice, The Spook's Curse and The Spook's Secret have all been shortlisted for the Lancashire children's Book for the Year Award. The Spook's Apprentice is the winner of both the Sefton Book Award and the Hampshire Book Award. www.josephdelaneyauthor.com from publisher's website
