Travel and history
The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians by Philip Marsden — The best travel book about Armenia. Marsden travels through the diaspora communities of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus tracing what it means to be Armenian. Beautifully written and still relevant.
Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian — A memoir that moves between an Armenian-American childhood in New Jersey and the genocide history buried within his family. One of the most powerful accounts of how the genocide lives on across generations.
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power — Contains an important chapter on Armenia and the 1915 genocide, and helped bring the subject to a wider American audience.
Fiction
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel — A novel based on the true story of Armenians who resisted deportation by retreating to a mountain. Written in 1933, it remains the most-read fictional account of the genocide.
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk — Not about Armenia directly, but set in Ottoman Istanbul during a period that illuminates the world the Armenians inhabited before 1915.
Background
Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History by Ronald Grigor Suny — A scholarly but readable account of Armenian history from the 19th century onwards. Good for understanding the context behind everything you see.
History of the Armenians by Moses of Chorene — The 5th-century chronicle that remains the foundation of Armenian historical identity. More for the serious reader than the casual traveller, but extraordinary as an artefact.