Welcome the holidays with a chocolate rush -- and a trio of recent cookbooks to help out.

First is Maxine Clark's "Chocolate," a lushly photographed tour of the many paths to indulgence. It's hard to find a recipe in here that doesn't sound and look decadent, such as the Sticky Chocolate Gingerbread or Chocolate Cardamom Truffle Cake.

On the more academic side is Clay Gordon's "Discover Chocolate," a treatise on how to better appreciate chocolate.

Gordon, editor and publisher of Chocophile.com, covers how to taste and buy chocolate, how to pair it with food and drink, as well as how chocolate is made and where it comes from (and why it matters). Gordon does not, however, include recipes.

For that, consider the 72 delightfully approachable recipes in Marcel Desaulniers' "I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas."

Desaulniers, whose previous books includes "Death by Chocolate," walks readers through gorgeous holiday-friendly recipes, such as Chocolate Strawberry Hazelnut Brownie Bars, Chocolate Chip Pecan Rum Tart and Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake.

If you've ever wished your online recipe collection wasn't chained to your computer, there's a new service that might help.

The recently launched TasteBook Web site turns digital recipe boxes into ring-bound custom cookbooks. Still in its infancy, the site has limited application at the moment. But it does have great potential and it makes a great gift for the culinary-inclined on your Christmas gift list.

For now, TasteBook is linked with the culinary Web site Epicurious.com, which means users can import recipes and photos from that site's tremendous database (drawn from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines).

Users also can add their own recipes to TasteBook accounts, then add them to their books, which cost $34.95 for 100 recipes.

Once users select their recipes (except for personal recipes, everything is drag-and-drop) and cover art, the attractive and sturdy books are printed and delivered in about a week.

The drawback at the moment is that recipes are limited to those on Epicurious.com or those users are willing to type in manually. The company promises that in 2008 users will be able to link to numerous other online recipe sources.

Martha Stewart has released two massive collections of recipes drawn from the past 17 years of her flagship magazine, Martha Stewart Living.

The first, "The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics," is an updated version of a previously published book that offers 1,100 recipes published in the magazine between 1990 and 2000.

The second, "The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics," is new and contains 1,200 recipes published since 2000. Both books are exhaustive, clearly written and break recipes into 22 categories.

The books are meant to be used together, as the "The New Classics" contains a master index covering both books. This is a nice touch. Both also contain comprehensive equipment glossaries and guides to finding unusual ingredients.

For the creative cookiemaker, "Cookie Craft: From Baking to Luster Dust" from Storey Books makes a great bookshelf addition. The cookbook features creative designs and techinques.