Designing great beers by Ray Daniels is a great book that covers beginner and intermediate brewing techniques. It also has the basics on designing beers of your own, and detailed information on different styles of beers. I would highly recommmend it.
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian is also good. There's a new edition coming out in September. I've got the 3rd edition from 2003 and think it compliments Palmer's book nicely.
Brewing Classic Styles is really good, too. It has a recipe for each style, which helps you think about what you could do if you were designing a recipe from the ground up.