1.The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, by Karl J. Niklas, 1997. I bought this book because plants receive short shrift in most evolution books and are almost unmentioned in the Creo literature. This book is not too expensive, if you buy a used one, and has a lot of great information in it not available in other texts. He spends a lot of time on "Adaptive Walks" which was both interesting and a little too much. But his chapters on the emergence of plants onto land are quite good. Niklas' style is a bit thick, so it is not easy to read. I would recommend this book if you have an interest in plants, but not as a primary book.
2.Molecular Evolution by Wen-Hsiung Li, 1997. This book is very expensive (close to $200), so I borrowed it through my local library. Physically it is shoddy and there is nothing in it that justifies such a high price. The first third of the book is a review of molecular biology and population genetics and other related subjects. When Li does get into examples they are both overwhelming and very good. His description of the human apolipoproteins is perfect, but it his own work. He has few examples, but they are all very good ones and described in great detail. This is also a weakness - there are few examples and many others are not mentioned. In addition, this book is now old. Most information in it is now 10-15 years old and he has missed the great pile of new stuff that has come out since this was written. I recommend it if you can get it free or real cheap. I hope a new edition comes out, but it would have to be completely rewritten since the amount of new data is overwhelming. Somewhat of a disappointment to me.
3.Lehninger, Principles of Biochemistry, by D.L. Nelson and M.M. Cox, 2005. Since Lehninger is no longer personally involved in book writing, the task has been taken over by Nelson and Cox. They have kept what made the old Lehninger's so powerful and added a big pile of new stuff, especially 3D models of proteins. They have done a great job. This book is expensive (over $100), but I managed to get one for about $50 that was almost like new. While evolution is only treated in passing, the evidence in this book buttresses evolutionary theory in a powerful way. You can also get a lot of peripheral stuff that I think is probably superfluous. Highly recommended.
4. Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas Futuyma, 1998, 3rd edition. This is the classic Evolution book. Every person on both sides should read it. I got an almost new one for about $40, so it's not too expensive. It does need updating since the information is now 10 years old, but the examples are very good and he covers all aspects of evolution. He spreads his examples out over many groups and, as a result, the detail is not that good. He even has an appendix "Contending with Creationism". It could have come right from a CREVO thread here at FR. In addition he discusses "optimal design" periodically (p.5) "The respiratory pathway crosses the path that food follows from pharynx to esophagus. This is not an optimal design [choking hazard]; it makes sense only in light of a history in which the nares of primitive fishes were recruited for breathing". Highly recommended for both evo types and Creationoids who want to make sense and not look silly.
I have two other books I am in the process of digesting Biology of the Prokaryotes and Molecular Genetics of Bacteria that I will review later if I think people may be interested.
The problem with science has always been that as soon as a book is published it is out of date by a few years. And in the rapidly moving areas of molecular biology those few years can be big. These books can help interested people a great deal, but keeping up to date will have to be done in a high tech library, if you have one available.
Too bad these huge and expensive books aren't available on the internet. They are't making the authors rich selling a few hundred copies at $200.
Many colleges and universities give lifetime library priveleges to graduates. That, plus interlibrary loan could make much off this material available.
My thought is why not make this stuff available on the internet, reinbursing the authors via university libraries? Anyon who has library priveleges could download the text, and anyone not affiliated with a library could join for a fee.
Google has the means and the motive to host a project like this.