I would suggest following swatkat's advice. There are no better books for PHP and JavaScript than O'Reilly's Learning.. and In a Nutshell.. books. As for Java, the best I've seen is the Java 2 Programming Bible (IDG) by Walsh, Couch and Steinberg. Covers nuances of the language the others dont. Plus, its very easy for a newbie. Once you're on familiar ground with Java, you can migrate to The Complete Reference and Ultimate Java Programming (Wiley)