A London house. A warren of rooms. The tenants refusing to budge. A gallery of characters presided over by the extraordinary transvestite Freddie Parts. He enlists the help of a young man who lives in the basement with a beautiful rich wife. A comic novel of wit, character and language.

"He has written a very funny book. Connaughton, like Tom Sharpe, catches the madness of the annoyed. He is a fine writer and observer bathed in humanity and love."
Illtyd Harrington - Camden New Journal.

"Every page harbours a poetic phrase or image. At its astringently sad best Big Parts is big art."
Brian Lynch - Irish Independent.

Shane Connaughton
Shane has won the George Devine Award, Royal Court Theatre, London, The Hennessy Literary Award, The London Irish Post Award. His first novel A Border Station was short-listed for The GPA Literary Award. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the film My Left Foot.

Science or pseudo-science? Art form or the graphics of biology? The Encyclopedia of Optography is a fusion of art book and academic anthology, gathering together for the first time a collection of essays by some of the only writers on the subject.

Optography - a method for extracting and temporarily 'fixing' the last imprinted image on the retina at the moment of death. An archaic method shrouded in myth, yet was an early hope for forensic science.

A condemned young man, two scientists, Jack the Ripper, Salvador Dali and the only known human optogram are crucial leads explored here in the quest to uncover the truth and fascination behind the myth.

Encyclopedia of Optography is an art book and an anthology on the subject with contributors like Dr. Evangelos Alexandridis, probably the only person alive to have produced optograms in the 20th century. This extended and re-edited volume coincides with Derek Ogbourne's collaboration with The British Optical Association Museum, September 2008.

Derek Ogbourne
Derek Ogbourne studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1983-1989) and has exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad. Exhibitions include What Make You, What Makes You at the South London Gallery, Space International, Valencia, Spain and Museum of Optography at the Brigitte Schenk Gallery, Cologne.

Ogbourne's work is powered by the frenetic and exhilarating ongoing plot of big themes: physical life, death, violence, beauty and the sublime; landscape and vision. Pulsing with the strengths and frailties of what it is like to be human, his obsessive preoccupations result in deeply complex, emotionally engaging artworks. He is best known for video works such as 'Gravity and Others', 'Struggle and Magic Mountain'. Ogbourne's latest works range from his cinematic piece 'Death and the Monument' and 'Flesh' - to his clinically sublime photographs of dissected cows' eyes and recent series of large sensitive landscape drawings.

In Franks' gripping psychological novella about memory and forgiveness, a man walks across the wild moorland in the north of England for a meeting with his estranged and ancient father. He is re-treading the ground the two of them strode together nearly forty years before, and trying to piece together the circumstances of his mother's death. Was she the victim of her own excesses, or did his father have a hand in it? Must he be thought of as a murderer? As he ponders these things England is in the grip of a drought and the ruins of the old Cumbrian village of Mardale, flooded before the war to create a reservoir for Manchester, are slowly inching back into view as the water subsides. Will fresh answers to his own pressing questions be delivered by this re-emergence of the past? In the same volume are The Tarnished Muse, a wicked satire on the theatre and the press, and The Night Everything Happened, a riotous comedy about a young man out of control in London.

Going Over - The winner of the "New Writer Magazine"
National Novella Competition

What Reviewers Said About Franks' Novel Boychester's Bugle:

"Brilliantly comic."
Novelist Tom Sharpe.

"A very funny blackish comedy about the introduction of new technology."
Alan Hollinghurst, The Observer

"Sharply satirical ... a sting in every paragraph."
Times Literary Supplement

"Alan Franks writes now in the style of Flann O'Brien, now in that of the young Kingsley Amis ... a very odd, brave novel."
The Tablet

Alan Franks
Alan Franks is an award-winning author, playwright and musician. His plays include The Mother Tongue and his fiction includes Boychester's Bugle, published by Heinemann and New English Library. Going Over, now published in a collection of his short fiction by Muswell Press, won the 2003 novella competition run by New Writer Magazine. As a songwriter he has made four albums with the singer Patty Vetta; one of the tracks, The Wishfulness Waltz, was recorded by the veteran English band Fairport Convention. His poetry has won several prizes, including the inaugural Wigtown Competition, Scotland's largest. Unmade Roads, also published by Muswell Press, includes his winning entries in the Plough and Petra Kenney competitions. He has been described, by the late John Rety, co-founder of Torriano Poetry, as "a modern day Sydney Carter." He has written for The Times for more than thirty years, covering a wide variety of topics in the arts and social affairs, and interviewing artists as diverse as Paul McCartney, Arthur Miller and Judi Dench. He has twice been nominated for a British Press Award.

James Boswell left his native New Zealand in 1925 to study painting in London at the Royal College of Art but was soon in the vanguard of the young intellectuals who belonged to the radical movement. By the early thirties he had given up painting and devoted himself exclusively to the struggle against Nazism in Europe and fascism at home. Satirical drawings and cartoons poured from his pen, appearing in The Daily Worker, The Daily Mirror, pamphlets and propaganda. In 1933 he was a founder member of The Artists International Association (AIA) In 1936 he began work in the design studio of the Asiatic Oil Company (now Shell Oil). He was called up in 1941 as a private in the RAMC and trained as a radiographer. He drew extensively scenes from army life. 1943 saw him in Iraq where he filled his sketchbooks (now in the possession of The Tate Gallery, The British Museum and the Imperial War Museum) with luminous desert scenes, the daily life of the soldier and with a remarkable set of passionate anti-war drawings, the peak of his work as a satirical artist.

In 1947 Boswell became Art Editor of Lilliput. Richard Bennett was editor. Together they produced a magazine that has remained unique, gathering round them a group of talented artists and writers - Ronald Searle, John Minton, André François, Gerard Hoffnung, James Fitton and James Holland, Edward Ardizzone, Paul Hogarth, Quentin Blake and many others. He had returned to painting and, in 1951, was commissioned to paint a huge mural in the Festival of Britain's Sea and Ships Pavilion. For the remainder of his life he concentrated on painting, held many exhibitions and illustrated books and record sleeves. 1967 saw a large exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute. In 1970 Boswell was commissioned by British Petroleum to paint a mural for their new building in Wellington, NZ. It is called 'The Golden Day' and is now hanging in the Palmerston North Art College, New Zealand. Its five panels follow the passing of the day, from dusk to evening. It is his last work. For more information go to www.jboswell.info.

William Feaver. b 1942, painter, writer, critic, formerly of The Listener, Sunday Times and, for many years, The Observer. 'Pitmen Painters' was the basis for Lee Hall's 'The Pitmen Painters', first staged in Newcastle, then at the National Theatre, London It is going on to NewYork, Seuil and elsewhere. Most recent books, since Boswell, have ben on Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach.

Out of Time is a passionate and violent story set in a primitive parallel world into which Joe Harding, a 17 year old boy, is catapulted. He has to survive against a cruel tyrant who has enslaved his country. He finds shelter among a hidden band of dissidents and has his first passionate love affair with one of the girls who finally sacrifices her life for him. Joe heads a rebellion against the tyrant and liberates the country. In the final fight he is attacked and finds himself back on his own planet. The two years he has been away - although only a few minutes in his own time - are a rites of passage which changes him utterly and forever.

I have to say that "Out of Time" stands proudly on my shelf of favourites. It is an extraordinary book, beautifully written and psychologically stimulating. To me it reflects aspects of humanity in a raw, sometimes provocative and honest way that evokes many emotions...an adventure, a real treasure of a book, one not to be missed!
Elaine Beard, Amazon

Ruth Boswell
Ruth Boswell's career has been largely as a producer in TV and film production. She worked at the BBC for eight years, producing major TV series with actors such as Juliet Stevenson, Patrick Stewart, Michael Kitchen and Kenneth Branagh. This was followed by four highly successful series of 'The Chief' for Anglia TV starring Martin Shaw and Tim Piggott Smith.

In 1995 she co-produced, with the director Peter Yates, a feature film for Hollywood, 'A Run of the Country' by Shane Connaughton starring Albert Finney.

She adapted Catherine Storr's famous children's book 'Marianne Dreams' for TV. This was followed by a children's' novel, 'Emmy' published by Routledge & Kegan Paul and read on Jackanory by Hayley Mills. She co-wrote, with Francis Kennett, a book about slavery 'Antigua'. An option to make a feature film was bought by the BBC. In 2005 Muswell Press published her novel 'Out of Time'. She is now writing the second volume to be published in 2011.

Frederick Douglass was a towering figure of the nineteenth century. Vitally involved in every major struggle for social change in the United States, from the abolition of slavery to the campaign for women's suffrage, he gave his life to the cause of making the world a better place. In his mid-20s he wrote the first version of his autobiography, describing his life as a slave and his escape. He journeyed to Britain, to argue the case for a global campaign against slavery and to escape the manhunters who were searching for 'their master's property'. He arrived just as one of the great disasters of the century, the famine in Ireland, was starting and at a moment when the Chartist movement was active.

Riversmeet imagines Frederick Douglass's reactions to these events, and sets his story alongside that of an Irish man caught in the horrors of the famine. As their paths cross and separate the two of them try to decide how to try to change the world. They meet again as a political solution is springing into life.

Richard Bradbury
Richard Bradbury has been a university teacher since 1980s, including a stint for the British Council in Poland - teaching American cultural studies, literature, film and theatre.

In 1998 he was diagnosed as suffering from a severe case of sarcoidosis, leaving him with serious and chronic health problems. The enforced stillness made him re-consider what it was he wanted to really do.

"Riversmeet" was a product of that, and he is grateful to Maureen Casey and Deirdre Rogers for supporting the writing, to Ruth Boswell for editing, and to Jan Woolf for championing it and commissioning the play 'Become a Man', about Frederick Douglass's visit to Britain in the 1840s, performed at London's City Hall and the Hackney Empire as part of the commemorations for the bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007. Richard has since written two more plays; 'Claude', about the poet Claude McKay, and 'Leaving,' about contemporary British rural life and he is at present working on a new play 'Blood Meadow' about the Western Rebellion of 1549.

He is also completing a companion volume to 'Riversmeet', set in the same period, and another novel set in the South West of England. He continues to teach literature and film for the Open University and the Workers Educational Association, and is chair of Kaleido, an arts and disability charity based in the South West.

Mike Dibb has been producing and directing films for television for many years on subjects ranging from cinema and jazz to art, sport, literature and popular culture. These include several collaborations with the writer John Berger, in particular the hugely influential BBC series and book "Ways of Seeing" (BAFTA Award 1972).

His other documentaries include "The Spirit of Lorca" (Gold Award NY Festival of Film and TV 1989), "The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dali", and "What's Cuba Playing At?" (on the Afro-Spanish roots of Cuban music), two films on Spain's great cultural archetypes "In Pursuit of Don Juan" and "The Further Adventures of Don Quixote", and three themed series on the contrasting subjects of 'Play', 'Time' and 'Latin-American Culture'. With Stephen Frears, he co-directed "Typically British", the long BFI/C 4 documentary on the history of British cinema.

"The Miles Davis Story", his two hour film for Channel 4 about the legendary jazz trumpeter (available on a SONY DVD), received The UK's Royal Philharmonic Society TV award and an International EMMY in New York as arts documentary of the year 2001. His most recent feature-length documentaries, also out on DVD, include "Tango Maestro-- the life and music of Astor Piazzolla" (106' BBC/Opus Arte), "Keith Jarrett-- the art of improvisation" (84' C 4/EuroArts) and "Edward Said-- the last interview" ( 206' ICA)."Spellwell" is his first book.

www.mikedibb.co.uk

Franks' first full collection of poems is a rich mixture of wit and lyricism. His style ranges from exquisite miniatures to ambitious narratives which breathe new life into the English ballad form. Here too are parodies of and tributes to such masters as John Donne, Matthew Arnold, John Clare and Philip Larkin. These poems display a mastery of style and an unfailing ear for the harmonies and discords of human affairs.

"Poetry of great musicality."
Jo Shapcott, president of the Poetry Society.

"A modern day Sydney Carter"
John Rety, co-founder of Torriano Poetry.

"...worthy of Shelley. Franks is the genuine thing."
Professor Ross Woodman, author of The Apocalyptic Vision in the Poetry of Shelley

Alan Franks
Alan Franks is an award-winning author, playwright and musician. His plays include The Mother Tongue and his fiction includes Boychester's Bugle, published by Heinemann and New English Library. Going Over, now published in a collection of his short fiction by Muswell Press, won the 2003 novella competition run by New Writer Magazine. As a songwriter he has made four albums with the singer Patty Vetta; one of the tracks, The Wishfulness Waltz, was recorded by the veteran English band Fairport Convention. His poetry has won several prizes, including the inaugural Wigtown Competition, Scotland's largest. Unmade Roads, also published by Muswell Press, includes his winning entries in the Plough and Petra Kenney competitions. He has been described, by the late John Rety, co-founder of Torriano Poetry, as "a modern day Sydney Carter." He has written for The Times for more than thirty years, covering a wide variety of topics in the arts and social affairs, and interviewing artists as diverse as Paul McCartney, Arthur Miller and Judi Dench. He has twice been nominated for a British Press Award.