His books have now sold more than 4.5 million copies around the world. Joe was writing right up until the end of his life and was about to embark on the next round of edits for the fourth in his Brother Wulf sequence. He travelled widely to promote his books, spending lots of the winter in New Zealand and Singapore, as he hated the cold, but most of his time was spent in his home county Lancashire – a place embedded in all of his writing.

Joe got to go to Canada to watch the filming, which he absolutely loved. In 2014, The Spook’s Apprentice was made into a movie called The Seventh Son starring Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges. The books have now been translated into thirty languages and won many awards including the Lancashire Book Award. He then left teaching and went on to write 12 more titles in his globally bestselling dark fantasy series, The Wardstone Chronicles, plus 17 other titles, predominantly set in the same world. He would write in the early mornings before school until his first children’s book, The Spook’s Apprentice about Tom Ward the seventh son of a seventh son who trained to fight ghosts and creatures from the Dark, was published by Random House Children’s Books in 2004. Joe worked as an apprentice engineer and fitter before getting his A-Levels at night school and then becoming an English teacher. He leaves behind his second wife (his first wife Marie died in 2007), two sons and a daughter, and his grandchildren. With much sadness, the family of master storyteller, Joseph Delaney, confirm that he passed away aged 77 on 16 th August after an illness, which, in his indomitable style, he kept to himself and his family so he could carry on with writing as much as he possibly could.

Last apprentice book 1