Bethesda Softworks, a ZeniMax Media company, and Del Rey, an imprint of Ballantine Books at the Random House Publishing Group, are pleased to announce that Del Rey Books will publish two novels based on Bethesda Softworks' award-winning, high-fantasy video game series, The Elder Scrolls . The best-selling game series is known for giving the player the ability to choose how their story will play out and unfold, and for the incredible amount of lore and depth found in these rich game worlds.

"Incredible amount of lore" indeed. The series boasts several novel's worth of readable text divvied into virtual tomes distributed throughout Cyrodiil, the panoramic province in which Oblivion takes place. Some are "skill books" that buff your stats the minute you crack them. Others snap markers onto your map and send you galloping into danger. But most are just, you know, books, stacked on shelves in the hundreds for no other reason than to edify your appetite for background lore and the odd bit of miscellaneous locational information.

Who'll author? Take a bow , who you might know as the guy who authored a couple New York Times bestsellers in the series. I'm not much for shared universe fiction -- the writing's almost axiomatically hack-ish -- so I'll highlight Keyes' original work, like his "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" quartet (see ) and "Age of Reason" series (also a four-booker), an alternate history science-fantasy involving historical luminaries like Isaac Newton and Ben Franklin mucking about with alchemy and demonology.

Best thing to do is sample his writing for yourself, .

As for the Elder Scrolls books -- two individual stories, or a duology? -- the novels will be "all-new, original stories based in The Elder Scrolls universe." The first one's titled The Infernal City, and it's due out sometime this coming fall.