Night of the Soul Stealer

Night of the Soul Stealer is a novel by Joseph Delaney, published in 2007, and one of the books in which Tom Ward serves his apprenticeship to a man who deals with witches, boggarts and worse for a living.

Tom is unhappy when his master the Spook tells him they will be spending the winter on Anglezarke Moor. The place is gloomy and forbidding, and Tom cannot see why anybody would choose it. The Spook's reasons become clear soon enough. There are two dangerous witches working on the moor, and both have to be dealt with before they cause serious harm, and there is also a dark mage at large, a man who intends to bring back an ancient evil that would be considerably harder to contain than any single witch. Tom, still learning his trade, finds himself in situations his training has not prepared him for.

Delaney writes a cold northern English landscape of old houses, bad weather and practical advice about the supernatural, and the series rests on the relationship between a demanding teacher and an apprentice who is not supposed to ask too many questions.