PHP and MySQL Web Development, by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson seems like a really good book on PHP. If you have ever tried the Peachpit Press books (the ones with the goofy colors and rabbit on the front), they are nice but they use a lot of basic syntax with very simple examples. In this book they make a point NOT to do that. The examples are real life situations and the book starts off jumping right into a order processing form. I compared it to one of the Peachpit Press books and there is a huge difference. I highly suggest paying the extra $20 and getting a book more like this one. It covers a lot more subjects on e-commerce and CMS. Im very excited to get into this book even the first example in the book looks awesome!