Galileo Publishers

One Hand Clapping is the story of Janet and Howard Shirley, living a dreary life in the dreary fictional northern city of Bradcaster. Howard works at the local garage and Janet works in the local supermarket, and they spend their evenings having dinner in front of the television. Their lives begin to change when Howard''s photographic memory wins them a gameshow fortune. Janet doesn''t want their lives to change that much. She is quite happy with the routine of their ordinary life, improved as it is by consumer goods and modern household conveniences. But once Howard unleashes his unusual brain on the world, the used-car salesman can''t seem to stop; and what he sees as the logical conclusion to their success isn''t something Janet can agree to. Anthony Burgess''s darkly comic satire of 1960s consumerism explores themes of the importance or otherwise of culture and education and the growing influence of America, and taps into contemporary anxieties about the future

Burgess''s purpose was to write a novel which would investigate some of the moral grey areas of the Cold War. The book deals with the misappropriation of nuclear secrets by the Russians, following the decision of Edwin Roper, a leading atomic scientist, to leave England and form a new allegiance to the Soviet Union. The novel begins with a long letter written by Roper''s old school friend, Denis Hillier, a professional assassin who has been sent to bring him home or kill him. Hillier encounters genuine evil in the form of Mr Theodorescu, an international man of mystery with a Romanian name and a perfect English public-school accent. Having administered a truth drug by nefarious means, Theodorescu attempts to extract secret information from Hillier, with the intention of selling it either to the Russians or the Americans. He does not care which side ends up with the intelligence: it is simply a question of who will pay the highest price. The moral centre of the book may be located in Hillier''s (and Burgess''s) questioning of the unprincipled neutrality of Theodorescu''s position. Given the historical reality of the Cold War, the novel suggests, it is imperative that everyone should choose something to believe in - a political ideology or a nation state - and remain constant in that belief. Theodorescu is a villain because he believes in nothing more substantial than personal wealth. His neutrality is presented as the ultimate evil. Among its other accomplishments, Tremor of Intent deserves to be regarded as Burgess''s most detailed statement about the atomic age. By investigating the ethics of nuclear technology, he demonstrates that his novels are capable of articulating complex ethical problems and engaging with the global politics of the mid-twentieth-century. This is a much under-estimated work, which shines a light onto the shadowy history of the Cold War.

MacDonald Harris''s posthumously published novel is set in the 1920''s against a backdrop of airships, mysticism, erotic love and a Europe that is picking itself up after WW1. The League of Nations is a giant airship constructed by the same factory in Germany that made the Zeppelins, and is owned by Moira, the leader of a semi-religious cult. The captain is Georg von Plautus, a Prussian WW1 Zeppelin commander who harbours a terrible secret from a bombing raid over London in 1916. Moira''s followers have embarked with her on an extraordinary voyage in this airship to a place that she calls Giaconda. The novel explores the lives of these characters on board taking the reader through a heady mix of sexual entanglements, metaphysics, and Blavatsky and Swedenborg influenced seances. Towards the end of the novel it is apparent that all of Moira''s devotees have one thing in common. This is perhaps MacDonald Harris'' most surprising novel, even bearing in mind that each one of his 15 published novels never failed to surprise the reader of the preceding one. The Carp Castle was completed shortly before his death in 1993 and seems to have disappeared at this time. Its re-emergence followed the very successful re-publication of his most successful book The Balloonist which left critics in the UK asking for more, and is part of the renaissance of this immensely talented writer who had so many followers and critical admirers in the 1980''s

This beautiful volume of winter and Christmas-themed verses will be a hugely welcome addition to the George Mackay Brown canon. The poet and novelist lived and worked all his life in Stromness on Orkney: the islands being the sole inspiration for the huge and immensely rich body of work that he left behind at his death in 1997. Many of Mackay Brown''s poems are set in the winter months and we have made here a selection of some of the most evocative. Seamus Heaney wrote of him: ''George Mackay Brown has added uniquely and steadfastly to the riches of poetry in English: his sense of the world and his way with words are powerfully at one with each other. The book has Orcadian woodcuts by the artist Kath Littler, including a cover illustration ''Hoy Hare''.

This unputdownable novel is set against a richly authentic backdrop of 1840s Cambridge. The Maiden Faust presents a new and startlingly original take on the Faust legend made famous by Marlowe, Goethe and Mann. The retelling, which uses contemporary voices, updates their preoccupations with a focus on technology, gender, and mental health: a feminist Faust for our times. In this forceful female-centred narrative the ageing scholar of the Gothic myth is replaced by Philippa Austen, a Cambridge undergraduate in an alternative Victorian England where alchemy holds sway. After Philippa encounters the unearthly Martha Stowfell (Mephistopheles), she strikes a bargain to unpick the threads of her dark history - but at what cost? The author, Conor Farrington adds: ''I wrote the book over the course of a decade, crystallising my engagement with a legend that has fascinated me since childhood. In writing The Maiden Faust, I wanted to explore timeless themes of selfhood, knowledge, and the disastrous liberation of unchecked ambition through a lens that is both deeply personal and sharply relevant to our current era. At the same time, it was crucial to me that this retelling be a feminist one, giving voice to perspectives traditionally sidelined in the myth''s history. I hope readers find in this novel not just a reflection of our times, but a provocative questioning of where we may be heading.''

It is 1980s Los Angeles. Alys, a wealthy young dilettante accepts the invitation of a stranger to ''get you into pictures'' and suddenly finds himself behind the movie screen in the black-and-white world of the Silents: a Hollywood precisely as it was in the 1920s where love is the only subject matter but passion can be expressed solely within the censor''s strict limits: where neither love nor death can last beyond the moment when the director says ''Print That!'' Alys''s love for the glamorous and elusive Moira Silver inevitably leads him to want to break out of this artificial world with her, back to garishly colourful Los Angeles. Screenplay is a novel as tauntingly erotic as it is brilliantly imaginative - a mysterious and captivating novel that, while unique in itself, shares the magic of John Fowles''s The Magus and Nabokov''s Pale Fire.

On the eve of World War II, Lady Lupin Hastings, the young, totally scatterbrained but kindly wife to Andrew Hastings, the vicar of Glanville, is off for a bit of a rest cure at a country hotel in Kent, owned and run by her old friend Diana Turner, while she recovers from a bout of influenza. However, no sooner has she arrived when a series of petty thefts - and perhaps even an attempted murder? - requires that she assume her other persona: that of detective. In spite of her best efforts, theft follows theft, and the guests in the hotel all seem to take their eccentricities to new levels. The situation gets even worse when a guest''s car nearly crashes after the steering is deliberately tampered with. Is it attempted murder? And just who set fire to Orchard house? It could be any one of the guests, a very odd assortment who spend most of the time bickering among themselves. As usual, Lady Lupin gets everything wrong yet somehow stumbles to the truth as she runs the hotel in Diana''s absence and tries to conceal her highborn origins from a socialist garage man she befriends. This is the third Joan Coggin book that Galileo has reissued. The first two: Who Killed the Curate and Dancing with Death have proved that the author has a substantial new following- all of whom will be very eager to read this totally entertaining mystery, first published in 1946.

It was a far cry from Communist China to the peaceful village on the South Downs, but to be a self-confessed murderer, keeping his agonized diary, it could buy no peace. But then who was the writer of the diary? ''I feel the net drawing in around me even closer and closer. Dufydd has appeared suddenly in Southmouth. He will never forgive. I remember his last words to me. ''Remember to come back, man, for if you do not, vengeance will follow.'' What did he mean by that? Who''s vengeance? The communists? Or had he guessed what I was going to do?'' This is one of the strongest narratives that the acclaimed writer, Clifford Witting, ever penned. Although it has the familiar Inspector Bradfield involved to investigate the murderous goings-on, the story that hangs between Communist China and the South Downs is entirely original - and completely compelling. Clifford Witting wrote 16 novels between 1937 and 1964. Galileo is proud to be reissuing them all.

Firestarter is part true-crime mystery, part historical investigation. Set in the early 19th century, it is the tale of a farm worker who gains notoriety for setting multiple fires on farms in a village near to Cambridge. It is also the story of how that village determines to rid itself of a man whose actions are not only disruptive but are a distraction from the drive for ''progress''. Was Stallon a revolutionary or a compulsive sociopath? A wronged man or a terrorist? History can''t tell us with certainty which of these labels fits John Stallon best, but each reader can make their own judgment, based on the evidence Firestarter claws back from history''s obscure sources. This book is both the compelling story of ''the firestarter'' together with a beautifully written and meticulously researched portrait of pre industrial Cambridgeshire.

When a body is discovered at a stadium used by a college athletics squad, Darac cedes leadership of an ongoing case to investigate. Who is the victim? Why were they killed? Who could have performed such a brutal act? As the list of suspects grows and the earlier case continues to frustrate Darac''s second-in command, Roland Granot, a mysterious sighting sets in train a series of events which threatens to strike at the very heart of Darac''s world. The setting with its vibrant light, and the spectacular Alpes Maritime mountain range at its back, is Nice. And with that celebrated azure coastline at its feet, Nice is as beautiful as any Mediterranean resort. But it''s also a multi-ethnic city of almost half a million souls. And are there serpents in this particular paradise? Ask Darac, Commissaire Agnes Dantier and the other officers of Nice''s Brigade Criminelle.

Paul Hussey, an antiques dealer from Sussex and his American wife Belinda have arrived in Leningrad. Paul is trying to raise some money by illegally selling dresses to a people rich in cosmonauts but poor in consumer goods. But the logic of Soviet economics proves more dangerous than he ever imagined. Moreover, Leningrad turns out to be a city in which daylight dawns in the middle of the night. Anthony Burgess''s hilarious and inventive comedy takes off when Paul learns some unnerving truths about his own sexual nature and that of Belinda. And now she''s receiving the keenest attention in the hands of the Russian bears from the State Medical Service. Honey for the Bears is one of Burgess''s most accessible novels, and is a strong candidate for the funniest. It is sheer reading pleasure.

When, in 1963, Anthony Burgess finally started work on the novel he had long planned to write, a challenge lay ahead of him. There was never any doubt in his mind that his fictional biography of Shakespeare should be written in a language that was, if not exactly that of the late sixteenth century, then an ''approximation to Elizabethan English''. Nothing Like the Sun opens with a young WS (as he is known throughout the novel) at home in Stratford-upon-Avon. WS is desperate to escape the confines of a domestic life in which he is distracted from great thoughts by being called in for tea. He hears the ''world, the wide world crying and calling like a cat to be let in, scratching like spaniels.'' We see him trapped into marriage with the older and possibly already pregnant Anne Hathaway, indentured as a tutor to the sons of a Gloucestershire magistrate, become a lawyer''s clerk, a father, an actor, a writer and a lover. And then of course there is Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton as well as a certain Dark Lady... The novel is a triumph of imagination, but imagination fired by the most extraordinary research into Shakespeare''s life. Only Burgess could have written this literary romp