DM guides help.

[Vella_Malachite]

Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

It's my birthday in a few days, and my aunt (she gave it to me early) gave me a cool gift voucher for books. Now, I want some DM manuals, but which ones should I get first. I mean, which ones are essential? From what I've gathered, Monster Manual is needed and the 3.5 edition DM guide, but am I right and are there any others?

[Narmoth]

Yes, it should be in the gaming section.

What you need is:
Players Handbook - tells you how to make a character, how to figh and the price and fucntio of stuff you'll want to buy.
Monster Manual - this is the book that list the stats for the mosnters. So if you don't wnat to make monsters up yourself, you should use this or download the D20 open content stuff.
DMs guide I haven't read, as I play 2nd ed, but as long as you aren't DM-ing games, you only need the players handbook and a set of dice

[Icewalker]

Players handbook is necessary.
DM's guide is useful.
The MM however...it can be useful, if you want random encounters and the like. I don't have any of them, although I do have many books with smaller creatures sections as resources, as well as the Fiend Folio.

Other than that you go for extra books, and one of the first I suggest is Nine Swords: Tome of Battle, good classes, a cool idea, with a very awesome background.

[Kaelaroth]

It is generally accepted that for 3.5, as a new DM, you need the Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual. If you're looking for some other books too, I readily suggest the Monster Manual III, which has some greatly overpowered monsters that can be used as bosses. Good Luck.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

It is generally accepted that for 3.5, as a new DM, you need the Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual. If you're looking for some other books too, I readily suggest the Monster Manual III, which has some greatly overpowered monsters that can be used as bosses. Good Luck.

With MM III, you should be warned that WoTC seems to rarely playtest anything these days, and that a lot of the CR's on monsters in it are really screwy. Quite a few monsters in there are either way too under or overpowered for the CR indicated, so you may need to watch out, and do some adjusting Other than that, it's a decent book.

[Narmoth]

CR is lame anyway. What you need to do is to look at the monster and see how much damage it will deal if the group does a good job defeating it, and how much damage it will deal if the group makes the worst possible desicions (sending the partys only cleric to parley with a pack of slimes)