The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida. Naoki is a 13 year old "non-verbal" autistic boy. It's not a book about how to deal or things to do....it's a book to help understand how the autistic child feels.

Two great books for surveying current science are Autism Spectrum Disorders (edited by Amaral, http://www.amazon.com/Autism-Spectrum-Disorders... ) and Rethinking Autism by Lynn Waterhouse (http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Autism-Complex... ).

These are dense books but often give the "real deal" about what's (un)known and they review a wide range of research.

Quirky Kids (http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-Kids-Understanding... ) is quite good because of the skepticism toward making too much of labels and diagnoses. Lots of practical advice.

Asperkids series is great for positive tone that you wouldn't feel bad for your child to read http://asperkids.com/

Because autism is so diverse (something Lynn Waterhouse nicely describes in her book), some books are 100% inapplicable to some autistics. It's important to understand that there are hundreds of ways to have autistic traits and every person is different.

So you sort of have to dig through books to find those that appear to apply most to your loved one(s) and what kind of family you want to have.

First-person accounts of autism are great, whether Ido in Autismland, Temple Grandin, John Elder Robison, etc. - you'll quickly see great diversity in how people experience autism.

Currently reading the Science of Making Friends http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/produc... which has great information for teens (and adults) on how to make friends.

The old classic How to Win Friends and Influence People isn't bad either, for that.

General parenting books often apply - after all, it's important to remain a parent and not "medicalize" your relationship with your child. Parenting books are if possible more polarized than autism books :-) from Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting and books on unschooling, through to "spare the rod spoil the child" kind of books, if that's your thing.

Lots of great resources out there, but again no book will make sense for every autistic person. Everyone is different.

"The Autism Book" by Dr. Bob Sears and "Healing the New Childhood Epidemics" by Dr. Kenneth Bock. I also really like "Relationship Development Intervention for Young Children" by Steven Gutstein and Rachelle Sheely.

I just read the book "Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius" and I really liked it - not that all kids with autism are "geniuses" but I found the book to be uplifting and it was just nice to read the personal experience of a mom who's gone through the diagnosis process, school, and lots of ups and downs. I'd love to read more books about people's experiences - if anyone has suggestions please post!!!! :)

I really liked "The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism"
Also, though it isn't specifically about autism, "The Upside of Irrationality" by Dan Arrielli is a great book that discusses how and why humans make decisions even though so many of them look irrational from the outside. I found a lot to like about this book because so much of our children's behavior seems pretty hard to understand. But beyond that, it helps you look at the way you make decisions so that you can make big decisions with more clarity because heaven knows we all have a lot of big decisions to make about our childrens.