Publisher is great..I would also reccommend Adobe Pagemaker - it is a little easier to use and probably close to the same price.
Publisher was also included in Microsoft's Office Proffesional edition - there may be a version lurking somewhere on the computers you have access to at work.
A great place to try software out before you've bought it is
www.download.com by Cnet - no spyware, reviews, and usually enough time to try out the software to make sure it really does what you want it to do.