Active Server Pages 3 Developer's Guide
by Alberto Manuel Ricart and Stephen Asbury
The greatest compliment a technical author can receive is to be shown a copy of his or her book that's tattered from use. If true, then Mr. Ricart and Mr. Asbury have my highest praise. A great book for learning ASP and a great reference when you need a refresher.

Applied Crytography
by Bruce Schneier
A great book for algorithm buffs. And it just so happens to be the bible on digital cryptography, too. One of those rare gems that belongs on the shelf of every serious developer.

ATL Internals
by Brent Rector and Chris Sells
Learn the hows and why of Active Template Library (ATL) programming direct from the two guys who know it best. I can't imagine writing ATL COM servers without a copy of this book.

C++ Primer
by Stanley B. Lippman, Josée Lajoie
The definitive work on C++ from two of the top experts in the field.

Crypto
by Steven Levy
An utterly fascinating account of the history of digital crytpography with the NSA as the villain pulling out all the stops to keep cryptography out of the public domain. Another thrill-a-minute ride from Steven Levy, one of the great technical writers of our time.

Debugging Applications
by John Robbins
I love the first two sentences in the introduction to this book: "Bugs suck. Period." Nobody talks debugging better than John Robbins, author of MSDN Magazine's popular Bugslayer column and debugger extraordinaire. If this book doesn't pay for itself many times over, then my name's Meg Ryan.

Essential COM
by Don Box
Considered by many to be the bible of COM programming, Essential COM is the most authoritative work on COM today and is a must-read for serious COM programmers. It's chock full of juicy details about how COM works and goes to great lengths to instill in the reader a sense of the spirit of COM programming. If you're new to COM, read Inside COM first so you can fully appreciate the amount of knowledge encapsulated in this book.

Essential IDL
by Martin Gudgin
The most authoritative book available on the Interface Definition Language. No serious COM developer should be without a copy.

Inside COM
by Dale Rogerson
If you want to learn COM, you have to start somewhere. And Inside COM is as good a place as any. I like this book because it introduces the fundamentals of COM without overwhelming the reader with details. It's a little thin in certain areas, but overall, it's still the best beginning COM book available and should be the first COM book that you read.

Inside Microsoft Windows 2000
by David A. Solomon and Mark E. Russinovich
The third edition of a fantastic book that explains the internal architecture and operation of Windows 2000 in lurid detail. The authors were granted access to the Windows 2000 source code, and it shows. Don't miss the section in Chapter 6 that documents the hidden algorithms that Windows uses to divide CPU time between concurrently running threads. Includes a CD full of cool utilities borrowed from the popular http://www.sysinternals.com/ Web site.

Mastering Regular Expressions
by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl
If you do Web application development of any kind, you need to know regular expressions. And when it comes to explaining regular expressions, this book has no peer.

Principles of Transaction Processing
by Philip A. Bernstein and Eric Newcomer
If you're new to transaction processing and you want to understand the transactional services featured in MTS, COM+, and Windows 2000, Principles of Transaction Processing is a must-read. Ever wonder why database locks are held until a transaction is committed or aborted, how MTS compares to other commercially available transaction processing systems, or why MTS automatically aborts a transaction that requires more than 60 seconds to complete? Inside this book are the answers to these questions and many, many more.

Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows
by Jeffrey Richter
The very next book that every Windows developer should read after Programming Windows is Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows. Each chapter tackles a pertinent subject such as processes, threads, DLLs, or structured exception handling, and gives it the kind of in-depth treatment that developers appreciate. Packed with useful code samples and newly updated for Windows 2000, this book is the fourth edition of the classic work that was formerly titled Advanced Windows.

Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
by Francesco Balena
Want to learn how to write Windows applications with Visual Basic? Then read the seminal work on the subject: Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0. This book touches on virtually every aspect of VB programming and spares no expense in covering the topics that really matter to VB programmers working in the trenches.

Programming Windows
by Charles Petzold
This is the book that taught Windows programming to a generation of programmers. Even with all the Windows class libraries and application frameworks that are available today, the best programmers are still those who understand how Windows is programmed SDK-style. And today, more than ten years after the first edition was published, there's still no better place to acquire that understanding than Programming Windows.

Programming Windows Security
by Keith Brown
Finally-a treatise on Windows security that covers all the bases and should be required reading for every Windows developer. Ever wonder how COM+ security works, what an access token or logon session is, or why CoCreateInstanceEx calls sometimes require 30 seconds or more to activate server processes on other machines? Programming Windows Security answers these questions and many more.

Understanding Microsoft Windows 2000 Distributed Services
by David Chappell
This latest gem from David Chappell goes under the hood to explain the core Windows 2000 services that support distributed applications. From Active Directory to COM+ to message queuing, David covers it all in an initimable style that makes this book equally readable by developers and non-developers alike. Don't even think about writing distributed apps for the Windows platform without reading this book first.

Understanding SOAP
by Kenn Scribner and Mark Stiver
SOAP is short for Simple Object Access Protocol, and it's arguably the most important network protocol introduced to the world since HTTP, the protocol that drives the World Wide Web. Understanding SOAP describes SOAP from A to Z and provides a welcome and readable perspective on the role that SOAP will play in the future of software development.

XML in Action
by William J. Pardi
Before you can use XML, you must understand XML. And when it comes to learning XML, I know of no finer book than this one. XML in Action hits all the hot spots, from XML structure and syntax to schemas and XSL. Its only weakness: It doesn't say much about programmatic interfaces to XML parsers.

XML by Example
by Benoit Marchal
Another fine XML book, and one that's more suited for developers. The language is a little awkward at times, but the content is killer.