I just recently finished reading through Taner Akcam's "The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire" and I was quite happy with it. I liked Akcam's attempts to weave the standard Turkish and Armenian narratives of the events together (so Turkish actions are not to be understood in a vacuum, but nor should the we take it for granted that it was 'what happens in war') and outlines exactly what he is trying to get at from the start. So for example Akcam states in the introduction that he is defining genocide in terms perhaps closer to Raphael Lemkin's intent, rather than the strict UN definition.

I don't think it would necessarily be a good introduction as it isn't really a straight narrative - the chapters specifically deal with certain points, though there is a bit of a chronology to the successive chapters. The focus instead is on Akcam's findings after conducting what seems to be very in depth research in the Ottoman archives, which have previously been under utilised. So the book has chapters as sub-sections that specifcally cover "what do the archives say about this event/claim?"

I gather Akcam's "A Shameful Act" might be a more 'traditional' text in that it follows a more straight forward narrative of what happened and when. So perhaps this might be a better entry to the subject?

Forty days of Musa dagh, semi historical account of Musa dagh resistance when Armenian fought turkish forces and were saved by the french navy after long siege.

as to historical, richard hovhannisyan is a known scholar of armenian history he must have books, you can also check the genocide museum website

you can buy a used copy of Peter Balakian's great "The Burning Tigris" for 1 cent on amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Tigris-Armenian-Genocide-Americas/dp/0060198400/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=