What are the best books to read on the Ottoman Empire for beginners?
The newest single-volume history, highly reviewed by historians and soon to become the standard text, is Douglas Howard's A History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). However the downside of Howard's book is that his attempt to cover a wide variety of themes leaves his basic political and military narrative somewhat bare-bones. As far as I'm concerned, this is a totally fine way to write history, but I know a lot of people are interested mainly in political and military affairs, and for that nothing can beat Caroline Finkel's 2005 Osman's Dream.
These two are really the only good options for a single-volume book on the empire's entire history. Beyond that, name a more specific topic and I can try to provide more detailed recommendations.
Have you taken a look at our books & resources list in the sidebar? In the Middle East section you can find some good book recommendations on the Ottoman Empire. However, I must warn you that the list is compiled by era with the exception of some topics. The Ottoman Empire doesn't have its own cross-era section, so you have to check out the era you're interested in.
That's not particularly surprising since Ottoman history covers a lot of time. The same empire saw the last crusades as well as World War I, if we argue that Anatolia of Osman's lifetime is not altogether a totally different beast from the Empire of, say, the Tanzimât reforms. The Empire like any long-surviving polity re-invented itself at times. What I'm getting at is that in my view there's hardly any commendable single volume history book on the entirety of the Ottoman Empire that is not already enormous.
Having said that, you might want to check out Caroline Finkel's Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. (New York: Basic Books, 2006.) It also has over 700 pages though.
Other things that you might be interested in, although they are not single volume history books of everything Ottoman: