Brimstone Books
Poetry
Bagatelles • White • Sonnets to Ganymede • Leaving The Easy City • Fyodor Tyutchev - Selected Poems • Illuminations. Rimbaud • Selected Poems: Revised and New • Origins • Through the Looking Glass • Rimbaud Revisited & Une Saison en Enfer • The Cosmographs • Paziols: Living in the Land of the Cathars • Blizzard • A Life Spanning a Century • The Portrait Gallery • A Mouthful of Stars • Papering Over the Cracks • Other People • Breach: the Art of Commons • Day Return • Fiesta • On the Edge • First Cut • Closer to the Edge
Non-Fiction
When the Water Speaks: A Memoir of Ibiza • Fyodor Tyutchev - Selected Poems • A Garden Centre Calendar • Roger Martin du Gard, Moralist • Mike Oldfield – A Life Dedicated To Music • The Tormented Prince • Evolution and Delusional Jealousy • Mirror of the Soul. A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev • Paziols: Living in the Land of the Cathars • In Search of the Celts • Flute • A Life Spanning a Century • Arthur Symons, Leading Poet of the English Decadence • Joy, Light, Sorrow and Splendour • The Loving Scapegoat • Breach: the Art of Commons • Via Contemplativa, Via Activa • Rimbaud Revisited & Une Saison en Enfer • The Slippery are Very Crafty
Fiction
The Sign: And Other Stories • The Old Woman of the Sea • Third Form at St. Claire’s • A Sound Like Angels Weeping • Dionysos' Island • The Bloods of Space • The Sound of Silence • A Box of Chocolates: 50 Short Stories • Another Mouth Has Passed • Opening Gambit • Internal Memorandum • Diggers and Dreamers • The Foundling and Other Stories
Drama
The Reluctant Nuns • The Chosen One • The Traitor • The Brotherhood of Thieves
When the Water Speaks: A Memoir of Ibiza
by Bonnie Cullen
 When Bonnie Cullen arrives in 1976, the island of Ibiza is a backwater of post-Franco Spain, a place where farmers scythe by hand, leap over fires at Midsummer. Over the next four decades she will witness its transformation into the clubbing capital of the world… Read more
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Bagatelles
by Gavin Bantock
 A light-hearted collection of concrete poems based on music, mathematics & the alphabet. The majority of these were written on a single Christmas Eve during the mid 1970s using a simple typewriter on which all the complex line-spacings had to be calculated manually, the rest some forty years later on an Apple computer… Read more
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White
by Gavin Bantock
 A collection of new poems based on the common theme of white, with occasional couplings to red and black… Read more
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Sonnets to Ganymede
by Gavin Bantock
 A cycle of fourteen poems using the traditional sonnet form and slant rhyme (assonance), in which the author intertwines fiction, reality and intense emotion in an attempt to describe his feelings for the series of ‘Ganymedes‘ encountered or imagined over a period of some sixty years… Read more
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The Sign: And Other Stories
by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Translated by John Dewey
 Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) is best known for his novel We, a major influence on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin’s dystopian vision of a totalitarian society of the future, written soon after the Russian Revolution, brought him into disfavour with the ruling Communist Party… Read more
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Leaving The Easy City
by RJ Hansford
 Leaving the Easy City is a collection of 35 poems (published posthumously) on the theme of wilderness, from hot deserts to the permafrost of Siberia… Read more
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The Old Woman of the Sea
by Gavin Bantock
 Bruce Dinwiddy, twenty-three, an aspiring poet but innocent of the world, has been given permission by his father to stay at the family holiday house at the very edge of the sea. He has invited there his young friend Stephen Pewit, who at nineteen is already a failed child-prodigy, a drop-out and an incorrigible rebel… Read more
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Third Form at St. Claire’s
by Gavin Bantock, writing as Enid Bantock
 A wacky Enid Blyton Spoof. A girls’ boarding school with a big, big difference. By far the funniest book of the series… Read more
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Fyodor Tyutchev - Selected Poems
by John Dewey
 The lyric verse of FYODOR TYUTCHEV (1803 – 1873), one of the treasures of Russian literature, remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world. This generous new selection of 100 of his poems, in verse translations by John Dewey, offers a rewarding insight into the work of a great poet… Read more
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Illuminations. Rimbaud
by Robert Yates
 In Illuminations, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) perfected the art of the French prose poem, eschewing the formalism of Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit and the diffuseness of Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris to create hallucinatory pieces, informed by the occult sciences and possessing genuine poetic tension… Read more
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A Garden Centre Calendar:
Choosing the right plant for your garden at the right time
by Marilyn Norvell
 The purpose of this book is to help customers at the garden centre make informed choices, when face with rows and rows of plants and seasonal delights. Getting started from scratch is buying some plants you like at the right time of the year. Every month at the garden centre will astonish you… Read more
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Selected Poems: Revised and New
by Jenny Johnson
 The poems in this selection range from the very spare to the very intricate. They have been written over a period of nearly forty years, but Johnson has not arranged them chronologically. The reason for this is that there are some poems that are quite unlike the others created just before them – as though they were heralds of a distant future… Read more
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Roger Martin du Gard, Moralist
by John E Garrod
 Roger Martin du Gard won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937. Although not strictly speaking a biography, this book illuminates Martin du Gard`s attitudes towards creativity, religion, politics, health, life and death, sexuality, marriage, friendship and his personal values… Read more
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A Sound Like Angels Weeping
by Jeremy Hilton
 Aysha, a very troubled and damaged girl in the care system and approaching adolescence, is befriended by Katy, a university student, and her dog Greg. As the relationship develops, Aysha's two half-sisters and members of Katy's extended family become part of the narrative, and in a remote cottage in the west of Scotland, an ex-alcoholic retired teacher leading a semi-reclusive existence receives a letter which will change his life for ever, and will ultimately have a profound impact on the lives of everyone in the novel… Read more
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Mike Oldfield – A Life Dedicated To Music
by Chris Dewey
 An account by This biography documents Mike Oldfield’s career through information gathered in interviews during the author’s 27 years producing Oldfield fan magazines.… Read more
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The Tormented Prince
by J Leigh Hirst
 An account by Canadian author J Leigh Hirst of the life and writings of Mark Holloway. Mark, who was married to Victoria Strachey, belonged to the literary pub and club scene that flourished in Soho from the 1930s to 1950s… Read more
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Dionysos' Island
by Keith Walton
 In 1971 two young men, dissatisfied with their lives, head for Greece on the long land and sea journey. Richard, recovering after a traumatic affair with a student revolutionary, is hoping to recuperate in its classical calm and sun-filled clarity, while Simon seeks to empty himself in mountain walking… Read more
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The Bloods of Space
by Stephen Owen
 Out there in the Galaxy, other human races exist. The Bloods of Space is a story of these other races, their politics, technology, and search for freedom…Read more
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Origins
by Sebastian Hayes
 “What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” These are the questions that the author has spent most of his life pondering, and these terse poems, some in traditional forms (sonnet, sestina), some in free verse, are a summary of his conclusions… Read more
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The Reluctant Nuns
by Sebastian Hayes
 Two beautiful young women from the minor gentry are entered, against their will, as novices in Shaftesbury Abbey before their father goes off to join the Fourth Crusade. Follow the professional jouster, Sir William of Palermo, and his troubadour companion, Sir Roger de Purbeck, as they attempt to extricate Angelina and Laurentia de Melbury from “the squinting walls of a provincial nunnery” and transport them to “a place of surety in sunny Sicily”… Read more
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The Sound of Silence
by Clive Russell
 Auriferous Ore, a gold-bearing material, was first found in Queensland at Canoona in 1858. The prospecting area rapidly expanded and when the Nashville Rush started in 1867 at Gympie, it came as a relief from the fierce depression raging in the State at the time.
William Hann, originally from Wiltshire, was appointed by the Governor in an attempt to supervise the fledgling industry, and he himself found gold at the Palmer River in 1872. By 1880 most of the gold was being mined by companies, although many individuals still searched, and hoped, and died, while places like Charters Tors (later Charters Towers) became immensely rich centres of industry.
However one of the independent mines, south of Charters Tors and worked by an extreme religious sect, was doing very well, until in 1886 an explosion… Read more
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Through the Looking Glass
by David Andrew
 I have been writing poetry that I’d been happy to read out in public for about fifty years. The earliest poem in Through the Looking Glass that I can definitely date was written in the severe winter of 1962/3 ('Delirium in Winter'). The sequence at the end ('Gone Away') in 2007/8. If I am pleased about an aspect of my work it is its range… Read more
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Rimbaud Revisited & Une Saison en Enfer,
A new translation
by Sebastian Hayes
 This is a very readable new translation of the famous French writer’s most important work complete with extensive much needed Notes and a long essay on Rimbaud, interpreted in the light of twentieth century social and political movements… Read more
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Evolution and Delusional Jealousy
by Syed Shah
 This book aims to see if jealousy and a pathological variant, delusional jealousy, can be understood from an evolutionary point of view. This is with the aim of trying to explain why we see it today and to understand why it presents in the way that it does… Read more
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Mirror of the Soul. A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev
by John Dewey
 Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-73) was a contemporary of Pushkin and is widely considered his equal as a lyric poet. This new biography tells the story of a fascinating life and personality as reflected in the poems, presented here in the author’s own verse translations… Read more
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The Cosmographs
by Stephen Owen
The Cosmographs deal, in part, with the dominant Archetype of Christianity. How does the West move forward? The West is arrogant and consumerist. Nature is seen as an exploitable machine. This is wrong. Lyrical Nature goes unperceived by 90% of Western urbanized humankind… Read more
Paziols: Living in the Land of the Cathars
by Pam Kelly and Keiron Pearce
 We are in Languedoc, land of the Cathars and the troubadours. A place of courtly love, dark deeds and ancient secret mysteries. A place where lived a peaceful and tolerant, simple-living people who were tortured and burnt at the stake for their belief that the material world was an evil sham and that the spiritual world was the true reality… Read more
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In Search of the Celts
by John H Pollard
 One of the great mysteries of the last 2,500 years is: where did the people known as the Celts originate? In this book John Pollard adds his intuition and many hours of patient research to archaeological evidence to assemble a plausible answer… Read more
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A Box of Chocolates: 50 Short Stories
by Various Authors. Foreword by Fay Weldon.
 The fifty stories in this book were all entries in Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s first short story competition, held in the autumn of 2008. The competition was meant for adults, and most of the thirty-six adult entries are in this book, but sixteen children also entered, the youngest just six years old. Their stories are also here… Read more
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Flying into the Blizzard
by RJ Hansford
 This collection is concerned with the poet as ‘maker’, and explores craftsmanship, nationality, and the spiritual experience… Read more
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Another Mouth Has Passed
by JC Sledge
 There is a proposal to build a social housing development in the attractive village of Horton Fence. This is not going down too well with some members of the community, notably the more elderly and affluent ones.
As the project progresses, it gives rise to all manner of events and memories. Some of them are rather less than welcome… Read more
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Flute
by Richard Adeney
 A candid and entertaining account of his life and achievements by one of the country’s most distinguished orchestral musicians. Flute gives an honest portrayal of the ups and downs of a professional musician’s life, and is full of anecdotes about many of the “big names” in 20th century music… Read more
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Opening Gambit
by Clive Russell
 An oilcloth package, discovered at a boot-fair, leads the Narrator into a story of a churchmouse who stows away in the portmanteau of Cardinal Campeggio. He was the absentee Bishop of Salisbury, a fast talker but slow doer, who the Pope had selected to act as Papal Legate at the divorce hearing of… Read more
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A Life Spanning a Century
by Dorothy Mules née Tabb
 Reminiscences, short poems and occasional pieces from a well liked Shaftesbury woman whose life covered almost the whole of the twentieth century… Read more
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The Portrait Gallery
by Sebastian Hayes
 A striking array of male and female personages, some historical, some fictitious, bare their souls in a taut series of dramatic monologues… Read more
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A Mouthful of Stars
by Sylvia Oldroyd
 A collection of 58 poems taking a lyrical look at a variety of life’s facets: including language and music, New Forest places and wildlife, family relationships, travels in Europe and world events; beginning with the elements and ending with time and the universe… Read more
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Papering Over the Cracks
by Pam Kelly
 A wry and sometimes painful look at how we complete the jigsaw of our lives and gradually put all the broken pieces back together… Read more
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Arthur Symons, Leading Poet of the English Decadence
by Sebastian Hayes
 During the Eighteen Eighties Arthur Symons, the ‘English Verlaine’, dominated the literary scene but has since then disappeared without a trace. Sebastian Hayes argues that he deserves to be remembered for his musical, precise and deeply felt poems and as a precursor of the Imagist movement. Read more
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Joy, Light, Sorrow and Splendour
by Chris Irven
 The Benedictine monk introducing this book describes it as ‘the most profound and searching series of meditations on the rosary that I know.’ Lightly combining theological insight with a human touch it engages heart and mind page after page. Far from constraining the reader to follow a rigid form of words it positively encourages the imagination to explore unhurried the events in the life of Jesus, drawing one into the story like a novel. The 200 separate thoughts are gathered into 20 packets called mysteries, each beautifully illustrated in colour, providing a meditation that can last from 15 minutes to an hour depending on mood and time available… Read more
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The Loving Scapegoat
by Chris Irven
 In its use of English and its coloured illustrations this book offers a Stations of the Cross in a direct and down-to-earth style. Following the journey of Jesus from Pilate’s Pavement to the Place of the Skull it explores the thoughts and feelings of the man who was also the Son of God. But we the reader find ourselves in the shoes of those he met on his way – from Pilate who sentenced him, to the escort commander, to Simon the stranger, the compassionate women, the brigand dying beside him, the Centurion – each brought into sharp self-awareness by briefly encountering this extraordinary condemned man. Not a book for those unwilling to be challenged, The Loving Scapegoat snaps sound theology into its rightful place in today’s world.… Read more
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Other People
by Pam Kelly
 “Other People” is about innocence and experience and how our lives are shaped and changed by the people that we meet. It starts with the author’s childhood as a war baby and ends with the question we all ask ourselves — what if it had all been different? Read more
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Breach: the Art of Commons
By Catherine Simmonds, Rachel Sargent, Justin Orwin and Keith Walton
 The Art of Commons is the response of four artists - a poet, a painter, a photographer and a prose writer - to a Dorset Common (Breach Common, Shaftesbury) over a six month period from the shortest day of the year to the longest. Read more
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Via Contemplativa, Via Activa
by Sebastian Hayes
 “What is this life if full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”
Present Western society has become all bustle, noise, travel and competitiveness. Is this a good thing? Read more
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Day Return
by MC Wood
 With 44 poems, 'Day Return' covers the range of human experience, from birth to death, from humour to sadness… Read more
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Fiesta
by Pam Kelly
 By the author of On the Edge. Poems of varied mood and content written in Andalucia in April and May 2007… Read more
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On the Edge
by Pam Kelly
 20 poems about how one woman sees life, love, sex and death in the 21st century, On the Edge takes reverent and irreverent looks at the way postmodern Britain shapes our lives. Personal, tragic, witty and thoughtful, the poems cover… Read more
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Internal Memorandum
by JC Sledge
 There are hopes, achievements and frustrations at work, just as there are in our personal lives. What goes on in one aspect of our lives is bound to have an influence on what happens in the other.
As Martin Brown finds out… Read more
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The Slippery are Very Crafty
by David Grierson
 At a time when China is rarely out of the western media, we have here an opportune and personal perspective on life in the mighty People’s Republic – a country that never fails to fascinate, bewilder, beguile and, from time to time, frighten as well… Read more
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Diggers and Dreamers
by Keith Walton
 Rural Languedoc. The South of France. Summer 1976.
‘There is another world, but it is in this one’— and the characters in this novel, in their different ways, mean to find it… Read more
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First Cut
by Keith Walton
 The 39 poems, a selection from the work of several years, range widely, from the precisely-observed descriptive to the philosophical, from the lyrical to the (subtly) polemical, from moments captured to stories told… Read more
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The Chosen One
by Sebastian Hayes
 A group of middle class intellectuals accompanied by a mysterious South American visitor have just ended an informal dinner party and to pass the time start a session of Ouija. The men present sabotage the attempt though one or two garbled messages start coming through. Then everything starts to go wrong… Read more
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The Foundling and Other Stories
by Sebastian Hayes
 Thirteen remarkable tales in which you encounter a girl with gull’s feet, a talking pheasant, a cave of nothing, a universe in creation, a prince imprisoned in a garden of earthly delights… They recall at once traditional folk tales, Calvino’s clever reworkings, biblical and Gnostic parables, creation myths… Each story is thought-provoking and hugely entertaining.
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The Traitor
by Arnold Hinchliffe
 Is it better to fight against an oppressive regime, or to collaborate with it in order to gain a position from which one can do a little good? This is the dilemma explored in Arnold Hinchliffe’s last play… Read more
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The Brotherhood of Thieves
by Arnold Hinchliffe
 London 1776 “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains” (J-J Rousseau). In America the colonists have just raised the flag of revolt while in France the tottering ancien régime is nearing its end. In London, magnificent and miserable London, a formidably well-organised band of thieves led by Ne’er Hang Jack, terrorise the wealthy, combining violence with deep revolutionary convictions… Read more
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Closer to the Edge
by Pam Kelly
 “It is time, I think, to break the silence and take a hard look at what has become the last taboo, i.e. talking about death”… Read more
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