This is embarrassing to admit, but I haven't read much in the way of nonfiction books about video games. Don't get me wrong: there's some incredible work out there. In general, however, I've found that digging around for more books very quickly slides into work that is prohibitively technical, academic, or both.

Inspired by the award-winning CGI trailer that sort of vaguely touched on the actual gameplay of Techland's upcoming zombie survival game, UK author Mark Morris delivers his take on the tropical carnage with Dead Island: The Book.

Andrew Ryan was a visionary, dreaming of a utopian society where great men and women could live free of the rules and the government keeping them from realizing their true potential. His story begins in BioShock: Rapture, available today in bookstores everywhere.

Want to get more out of Monolith Productions upcoming downloadable multiplayer game Gotham City Impostors? Then you'll want to read Batman: Impostors, an epic four-issue story arc that first appeared in Detective Comics last year.

Fans looking to delve deeper into the cyberpunk dystopia of the Deus Ex series need look no further than Deus Ex: The Icarus Effect, a novel coming next year from Del Rey and tie-in author supreme James Swallow.

If leading a large World of Warcraft guild seems like a fun way to spend your free time, then you should probably check out Scott F. Andrews' The Guild Leader's Handbook to see the hellish task it really is.

Acclaimed writer B. K. Evenson delves into the history of the Church of Unitology and the origin of the mysterious "Black Marker" in Dead Space: Martyr, a prequel to Visceral Games' sci-fi horror spectacular.

Sociologist and director of Human-Centered Computing at the National Science Foundation, William Sims Bainbridge spent 2300 hours entrenched in popular MMO World of Warcraft, looking for look for insights about Western civilization. What did he find there?

In The Harvard Lampoon's literary parody Nightlight, potential vampire Edwart Mullen warns the naive Belle Goose that he won't always be around to protect her from Sega.

Apparently the 2010 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition is "a must-have for fans of gaming," according to some gaming blog.

Because there are two sides to every conflict, Mythic and Games Workshop publishing arm The Black Library have released Forged By Chaos, a novel that explores the fragile, deadly alliance of the forces of Destruction.

Tor Books has released a list of the authors contributing to the Halo: Evolutions anthology novel, along with the cover art, featuring everyone's favorite green suit of armor with a guy inside it.

Author Greg Keyes is better known to me by his Star Wars Expanded Universe contributions, but as the writer on The Elder Scrolls: Infernal City, he's been promoted to "potential Bethesda informant."

The land of Tamriel is terrorized by a floating city that first kills and then raises the dead in The Infernal City, the first of two Elder Scrolls novels by bestselling author Greg Keyes.

The epic tale that began in The Stolen Throne continues in October as Tor Books releases Dragon Age: The Calling, further expanding the Dragon Age fiction beyond the video game.

Summertime is here, and it's time to hit the beach, splash in the waves, and bask in the sun with a little ultra-portable gaming, courtesy of Kotaku's 2009 Summer Reading List.

Disney continues to stand behind their answer to the Pokémon, releasing a series of junior novels based in the Spectrobes universe.

New York Times bestselling author Karen Traviss picks up the story of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago where Gears of War 2 left off, with next month's release of Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant.

The official novelization of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is due out in November, raising the question of how many different ways there are to say "hiding his crotch with his hands".

Noted science fiction author Greg Bear takes a stab at the earliest days of the Halo universe with The Forerunner Trilogy, traveling 100,000 years into the series' past.